Basket Tutorial (Knit or crochet!)
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I absolutely love the trend to decorate with cute bulky yarn baskets, especially when they have leather accents! The mixture of fuzzy yarns and sleek leather makes for a wonderful juxtaposition of textures. When you use muted earth tones, it gives the basket coastal vibes that are great for summer décor!
While I do know how to crochet, I’m more of a knitter. I’ve struggled to find a good knitted basket pattern, especially something with leather accents. I decided to remedy this problem by creating my own and sharing it with you all.
I’ve written out the instructions below, but if you’re more of a visual learner, you can follow along with the video tutorial below.
To begin you’ll need a basket kit from my shop, you can snag one here. The kit includes one hand-punched leather base and two handles with pre-punched stitch holes dyed a beautiful medium brown. It also includes enough heavy duty leather thread to attach the handles.
In addition, you’ll need extra bulky yarn, a size G crochet hook, and either size 11 circular needles or a size M crochet hook (depending on whether you’d like to make a knit or crochet basket).
For the yarn, I decided to use four strands of worsted weight wool I happened to have on hand. You could also use two strands of bulky in place of the extra bulky yarn.
Start by creating a slipknot in your yarn. Starting from the smooth or right side of the leather insert the crochet hook through the first hole. Once your hook is through the hole, you will grab the slipknot with the hook and pull it through the hole, you’ll now have one loop on your crochet hook. Yarn over and use the hook to slip this yarn through your first loop. Yarn over one more time and pull it through the loop one more time. You will be back to one loop on your crochet hook. Now that your first stitch is established, you can either begin creating a crocheted or knit basket.
For those of you who are wanting to create a crocheted basket, simply place a double crochet in each hole. You would then do a slipstitch to join at the end of the round, switch to a size M hook, chain two and continue in the round until your basket is to your desired height. I won’t be showing this process in the video, but I’m sure you get the idea.
If you’d like to continue with the knitted basket pattern, at this point you’ll want to repeat the process I described previously. Unlike with the crochet basket, you’ll need to leave a stitch on your crochet hook for each hole on the basket base. Once you have several stitches, you can begin feeding them onto your circular needles. Repeat this process until you have a stitch on your needles for each hole in the base. At this point you’re going to knit in the round.
A special note for the lefties, while I crochet right-handed, I knit left-handed. This has created a little gap at the beginning of my rounds that you may notice. If you’re left-handed, I highly recommend working counterclockwise with your crochet hook so that you have a smooth transition. I unfortunately, haven’t been able to train my left hand to crochet.
The first couple of rows are going to be a bit tight, but I’m going to share a couple of tricks. You can either begin with circular needles that are too long to give you extra needle cord length to work with or you can use two sets of 16” needles. If you’re using two sets, you’ll just work your stitches onto the spare, swapping back and forth between sets. After those first rows, you’ll easily be able to go back to one set.
Once my basket was as tall as I wanted it, I switched to a seed stitch. If you don’t know what that is, it’s knit one, purl one on row one and purl one, knit one on row two. Repeat those rows for an inch, which worked out to be four rows for me. At this point you’ll bind off all stitches knit-wise. Weave the loose strings and trim any excess.
Now you’ll be adding your handles. I decided my basket ended up being a little too tall, so I folded down my seed stitch rows for a rolled cuff. If you don’t want to do that, you can leave yours unfolded. Use the provided thread to add your handles on either side of your basket. I like to use saddle-stitch which uses two needles, but you can use the stitch style you are most comfortable with.
Depending on your yarn choice and tension, your basket may slouch a bit like mine. If you don’t like that look, you can add spray starch, which you can find in the laundry department at most stores. Start by spraying it directly onto the yarn on the inside, avoiding the leather as much as possible. Then place the basket upside down on something that can hold it into the shape you’d like. As you can see, I used a vase. Then give the outside another good spritz. If you accidently get some on the leather, it’s no big deal, simply use a damp cloth to wipe off the starch. Once your basket is dry, turn it right side up and test to see if it holds its shape. If not, repeat the starching process until it’s to your liking.
Now you’re done! Thank you for joining me today. If you liked this video, please be sure to click the subscribe button. Have a wonderful day everyone and remember life’s better with leather.
Thank you for joining me today, and as always, life’s better with leather!
jess
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