One of the commonest ways of starting a twined basket is a bundled start, where you lay one group of stakes on top of another at right angles and twine them together, gradually separating out the individual stakes. I wondered what would happen if I created a circular “warp” by winding thread around an embroidery hoop instead.

So this is what I did, tying the ends of the thread together and holding everything in place with the outer hoop. If you’ve ever made a Dorset button, it’s a similar set up, but I made a lot more spokes, as I thought the twining would be too loose otherwise.

I twined over pairs of warp threads to start, as they were all quite close together. As I progressed, I began twining the warp threads individually, but staggering them in pairs to create an organic forked pattern.

As I got closer to the edge, the pattern became less flat and uniform due to the hoop separating the two warp layers. It’s not that obvious in the photo, but I actually quite like this effect – it got me thinking about whether I could use that difference in depth to add texture to the whole piece in future.

I finished by removing the outer hoop and winding thread around the inner hoop. It could be interesting to experiment with different colours and twining techniques, like packing, in future.