Woven Heart Basket: A simple tutorial

We made these simple and beautiful woven heart baskets again, so I thought I would share this post again too! Hard to believe I first wrote about these two years ago. Boy time flies, and apparently very little actually changes in our house … well except the house.

Anyways …

Here it is:

We have been going to a Waldorf class one day a week for the last few months.  Each day we go, we do some handworking of one sort or another.  Last week, we made these neat felt woven heart baskets.  Once we got home, we experimented with making them out of paper – they worked great!  Best of all, it is so easy to make a woven heart basket. You just need to get the hang of it.

This woven heart basket is very easy to make – though a bit tricky to explain.  We took lots of pictures, so hopefully you can get the idea.  Please email any questions – you can reach me at: howweelearn@gmail.com

A woven heart basket tutorial

1.  Cut two ovals the same size with two different colors of paper.

2. Fold the ovals in half and cut three slits in the middle of each oval.

3.  Fold the oval in half and weave them together – see below 🙂

To weave the woven heart basket

You weave this woven heart basket together just as you would weave anything together – but with one twist.  When you typically weave something: over. under, over, under – with this basket you weave by going: around, through, around through.

Let me explain with pictures.

Keep both the red and pink ovals folded in half.  Take the top strip of each oval.  Here, we are weaving the red oval onto the pink oval.  First, take the first strip of the red oval and put it around the first pink strip.

Next, with that same first red strip, put it through the second pink strip.

Then, you continue – with that same first red strip, put it around the third pink strip

Finally, with that same first red strip, put it through the fourth (and final) pink strip.

Then you simply repeat for each of the red strips.  The only difference is that you will start with the opposite direction.  Since we started the first red strip with going around, we would start the second red strip with going through.  Make sense?

No need for tape or staples, it will stay together nicely all on its own once you are finished.  When you are finished weaving, you should have a woven heart basket that looks like this:

Once you get the hang of it, I promise this woven heart basket is very simple.  It is perfect for holding little Valentine’s day treats and cards too!

This is an activity my 11 year old and I did together.  It was excellent for practicing visual spatial skills and patterning.  I think it would be tricky for little ones – though they would certainly enjoy using the woven heart basket!

I hope you are having a lovely week friends, see you here again tomorrow!