Plastic Berry Baskets Woven With T-Shirt Yarn

We eat lots of mushrooms, and I just can’t resist saving those plastic baskets! The last bunch I sent off to a nursery school, and now I have a few more that need a creative solution. So dear readers, introducing a fun summer recycling craft that looks amazing and could be used to hold little treasures: woven plastic berry baskets, or maybe you’d prefer to call them embroidered plastic baskets. or plastic basket needlepoint with t-shirt yarn? This is actually the third plastic basket craft I’m sharing with you, the first was a crocheted t-shirt yarn berry basket, the second was a simple t-shirt yarn woven berry basket, and now, ta da, this one! This fun recycling craft uses t-shirt yarn which gives the basket a contemporary look, and of course any project using t-shirt yarn always looks great, so go for it. If you have some very chunky yarn you’d like to use, that could work too, as could light weight rope, so have fun experimenting, just be aware that the baskets themselves are not so sturdy, so too much experimenting or trying to use something too thick can result in breakage of the gridded plastic. Ah yes, I just realized that for those out there where plastic bags are still a part of life, using plastic bag yarn, or plarn, could also be fun. At the end of the day thought, the smooth graphic results with the t-shirt yarn just don’t compare, then again maybe I’m wrong, surprise me! Okay, lets get started….

You’ll Need:

• recycled plastic berry/mushroom baskets with grid pattern (the ones holding mushrooms around here recently are with rectangular pattern, which isn’t preferable for this as there are fewer holes)
• t-shirt yarn, make your own or buy industrial waste t-shirt yarn
• a large yarn needle with a blund end (for kids) with an eye big enough for your t-shirt yarn

How To:

There are many kinds of plastic berry/veggie baskets out there, so you may have to come up with your own design if your baskets are not the standard gridded ones.

Self explanatory, but be aware that yarn goes through each hole twice, otherwise you’ll see the plastic joins between the square. This is how cross stitch and needlepoint embroidery are done, so if this is unfamiliar to you, check out tutorials on either of those. I did work on the whole perimeter of the basket at one time, meaning at the corners I carried the yarn across the inside to the next panel, meaning there is lots of yarn inside the basket, but that is fine as there is really no way around it. You could always cover the inside with fabric or felt if you’re not pleased with the look. Check out my crocheted version of this craft here, in which the inside is gorgeous! To end off the embroidery, pass the yarn under a few stitches from the back and cut. Do not tie any knots, as that would be too bulky.

As you can see in this photo, on the bottom basket on the left I forgot to add the running stitch around the edge, so you can see how it looks without it. The goal is to cover those holes as much as possible!

Enjoy making some of these fun needlepoint embroidered (woven?) baskets, they’ll add a little touch of creativity to your summer!

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