Elbow welcome basket with wrapped swing handles

 I just finished this elbow basket, not hard to make but due to my "craft" elbow I have my left arm in a sling which makes it really hard to do anything.  I'm hoping taking medication and resting will help heal my arm so I can get back to crafting and typing normally. This typing with 1 hand is really getting old.

You can get stone buckles and charms but I use the wood shapes from my local craft store and paint them.  much cheaper! they are like .79cents !  I used light blue gray acrylic paint as a base and added speckles with dark blue, added a little shade to the heart then painted the country heart and the word Welcome.    I print out the word in your choice of font and size, trace it onto tracing paper then transfer it onto the painted heart, use a transfer carbon paper, transfer then paint.  I know  It sounds like lots of step, if you rather freehand it please do.  I'm just telling you how I did it.  I also varnished a clear coat after the paint dried to protect my hard work!  I had a incident last week with someone's child drawing on my painted heart, luckily it was done in crayola markers and not a sharpie, it washed right off. 

This pattern I purchased from Willowes basketry and yarn haus and apparently you can get it downloadable pattern, I have not purchased it that way so I don't know how that works but give it a try!

Since I cant give you the pattern, I thought there are people out there who wondered how you wrap a swing handle you make your self.  When I first tried years ago, the instructions was so vague I ended up using glue to keep it in place.  Now I look back on it and wonder why I couldn't figure it out and it is also very possible I'm still doing it wrong but, my basket handles are staying in place, swinging without glue so its OK in my book.

If you want to see how I do it here is a quick tutorial:

 Here is what the handle looks when its done.

 figure out how long you want your handle to be and make sure its soaked well.

Depending on what kind of swing handle you are doing, you will either poke the end through the space below the rim (same space you lash) or if you are using ears, you will inset in  the ears.




 here is a pic of swing handle using ears.

 give your self about 3-4 inches and bend the ends or if you prefer a rounder even handle make sure it over laps and make the ends meet someplace before bending the handle.

Not sure if you can see it but my handle ends meets on the inside, I like the rounder even handles so I overlapped them.




 
Then take a long flat or flat oval reed you are using to wrap soaked well, place it between the handle smooth side or round side down.










 bend the wrapper reed












use clothes pins to hold the overlapped handles and start wrapping! just like you do with any handles! you can add designs if you like or keep it plain.   I kept mine plain since this basket is going on my door.








once you reach the other side where you want to end, bend the reed upward.

make sure you don't unravel but just loosen it and tuck the end into the loose part.

pull it tight, using your finger to tighten one row at a time until its tight and the bent part is under the last row, pull and cut.  No glue is needed if you made sure it was tight!!









If you cut the reed while you pull, you should not see it!  I can't stress enough don't forget to wrap it tight all the way to keep it from loosing up in the future!!









Happy weaving!