Do-it-yourself basket weaving of plastic bottles: workshop

Recycling plastic bottles is an easy way to take care of the conservation of nature and create convenient and beautiful things that can be used in everyday life. In many courtyards, compositions of plastic flowers and animals are now found, but often they do not look very attractive and spoil flower beds more than decorate them. There are options for a more practical use of plastic containers: a fishing line of various diameters is cut from it, which is used in gardening, as well as for the construction and minor repair of furniture.

Use cases for plastic baskets

Having made a special tool for cutting, craftsmen make thin fishing lines or thick strips of material for weaving baskets and other containers. Strong, wear-resistant containers become indispensable gardeners. They can be used for harvesting, storing tools, containers for not too attractive flower pots or as a decoration for a summer cottage. Doing a basket of plastic bottles with your own hands helps to preserve the environment and can become an unusual hobby for the whole family. Plastic is easily stained with acrylic, which allows you to create bright patterns on the surface of the container.

Weaving baskets of plastic ropes: advantages and disadvantages

Making products from waste containers saves money that would have to be spent on storage containers. One of the main advantages of the art of weaving baskets from plastic bottles is the use of creative resources and the development of imagination. Each product can be made unique by decorating it with various crafts made from the same material, for example, flowers. The only drawback of this type of hobby is that the occupation is very fascinating and, starting to weave baskets from plastic bottles, it is difficult to stop. Using various techniques and combining the colors of the strips, the master is able to make a basket that is indistinguishable in appearance from a container of vine or wood. The process of creating a product takes only a few hours, if you prepare the tools in advance.

Tools and materials for weaving

For work should prepare:

• plastic tape;
• scissors;
• thin fishing line;
• blank for the bottom;
• glue gun for attaching decor.

It is usually not difficult to find material for making baskets: unscrupulous vacationers throw a lot of plastic bottles in the woods, on beaches, in summer cottages. Therefore, you don’t have to spend money on buying a tape to create a product. You only need to make a special bottle cutter to speed up the process of harvesting plastic yarn.

You can make a tool from a clerical knife and an iron corner, fastening them to each other. In the corner above the blade with a hacksaw, several holes of the required diameter are sawn out, and then a handle is attached to the base, on which the bottle can be hung. Having cut off the bottom of the tank, it is necessary to separate the beginning of the tape, insert its “tail” into one of the holes and simply pull it over the edge. Touching the sharp edge of the knife, the bottle will begin to cut itself, and the diameter of the hole will set the thickness of the yarn.

Weaving a basket of plastic bottles: master class

If you prepare strips of plastic of various colors, then you can combine them with each other to get different patterns. If desired, if the usual shades of plastic are not attractive, coloring of the blanks or the finished container with acrylic paints is used.

A step-by-step instruction for weaving baskets from plastic bottles looks like this:

1. Strips of plastic are cut into a width of 1 cm. For convenience, patterns of the desired length are used.
2. Each piece is folded in half, both halves are tucked along the edge inward so that they touch the central fold. You need to make a lot of such blanks, depending on the size of the basket.
3. Then two parts are put on one another to make a “corner”. This method is called a "snake."
4. Corners are put on each other until a strip is obtained equal to the circumference of the basket. Zigzag blanks are fastened together by a fishing line, forming the walls of the product. The pen is made in the same way. As the bottom, you can use thick cardboard or other material.

This is just one option for weaving baskets from plastic bottles. There is also a “checkerboard”, using which you will need a strong frame. In this case, the strips of tape are sequentially threaded through adjacent staggered. You can try different ways of weaving baskets from plastic bottles and choose the most suitable one for yourself.