Softcover Book Now Available

Softcover Book Now Available!

Cherokee Basket Weaving

These books contain actual colored weaving photos of each step in the weaving of the baskets.

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The Finished Basket

This is your finished basket.

For more information on Cherokee Basket Weaving or Cherokee Arts visit the Cherokee Artists Association of Oklahoma web site. They have great photos of the member Artists and their work.

Welcome

In the Southeast Cherokee often made, among other baskets, the Double Woven River Cane baskets. When they were removed in 1838 to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, they began to weave the Oklahoma Cherokee Double Wall basket. This Basket is most often made from Buckbrush, Honeysuckle and Willow. The photo above is one of my baskets, in the links section of this blog are photos of Mary Stone's baskets. My basket above is made from commerical reed size #1 or #00, once woven it is hard to tell what size the reed is, but it is the smaller reed. This small reed breaks very very easily even if wet.

My line of instruction for this particular style of basket is thus: I was taught by Kay Cope and Terry Restivo, who were taught by Linda Lou Alexander, who was taught by Edna Caldwell who was taught by Mavis Doering. (can you believe via the web I have made contact with Linda Lou....you will find Linda's webpage in the Links above:)) And my name is Charlotte Coats, enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. My screen name here is Contemporary Cherokee Baskets. For show purposes, any basket that has commercial materials in them is classified as a Contemporary Cherokee Basket and a Traditional Basket is one made from all natural materials and natural dyes.

The basket in these instructions is made of #2 reed and the dyed reed is dyed with commercial dye for reed, so this would be a contemporary Cherokee Basket but the weave is traditional. For more details on dying reed, see the Cherokee Double Woven Basket blog.