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Beginners Willow Basketry


  • Central Scotland School of Crafts High Street Dunblane, Scotland, FK15 0EE United Kingdom (map)

Fri 8 & 15 Nov (2 day course) - £220 (Booking on CSSC website)

Join master basket weaver Anna Liebmann for two fun and sociable days of beginners willow basketry and create a beautiful round frame basket followed by other willow projects of your choice. The basket form we will work with is versatile and infinitely adaptable, letting you dictate your own outcomes and create your own personal basket design. We’ll start with a dried hoop onto which you’ll attach wooden ribs to create a basket or tray form, using soaked flexible willow. We’ll build up our baskets using successive weaving, adding and shaping of more ribs to create the right shape. Select from the warm and varied hues of willow provided to create banded patterns within your weaving. The frame basketry technique is a vernacular style that was traditionally used to build Scottish fishing baskets, a great heritage skill that we are proud to continue.

Anna will bring a variety of samples such as nut baskets, decorative stars and bird feeders, to inspire your creative weaving.  Once you’ve completed your round basket you’ll be free to explore further small projects which will hopefully inspire you to makeethical and regenerative festive decorations and meaningful gifts.

Once you’ve mastered the basic principals in this beginners willow weaving workshop you’ll be well equipped to go on to make baskets under your own steam. We will be working with specially grown basketry willow but Anna will pass on a wealth of valuable information about other suitable plants, and where to find them. If you have any flexible material you would like to incorporate into your basket please feel free to bring them along to week and we’ll work on incorporating them into your basket. One year old pruning of most woods should be suitable, dog wood is a big favourite.

Beginners Willow Basketry is suitable for both beginners and improvers. It’s a great place to start if you’ve never woven before, or if you’ve taken one of Anna’s classes with us already this is a brilliant additional skill to add to your basket weaving repertoire.

  • All tools and materials are included in the course cost, but you are welcome to bring your own materials to try weaving with

  • Tea and coffee are provided but participants should bring their own lunch and utensils

  • All of our classes are suitable for over 16s, younger crafters may be accommodated if accompanied by a participating adult but please contact us before booking

  • If the workshop you were looking at is fully booked drop us an email and we’ll add you to the waiting list. We will add extra dates to our most popular workshops too, join the mailing list to be the first to know

  • All of our workshops are held at our accessible workshop at Craft Central, High Street, Dunblane, FK15 0EE.

  • If you need to cancel or reschedule your workshop we need at least three weeks notice. Please read our cancellation policy before booking

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19 October

Peebles Woodmarket

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10 November

Ideal Living