A country wedding, a
farmer’s market theme, held on a beautiful farm – what fun to put flowers and
vegetables together. In what??? That’s the question. Round tables of ten, many round tables
of ten…and a obdurate caterer who wanted everything on the table from the get
go – bread service, cups, saucers, Sweet-n-Lo, cream, resulting in a terse
“your centerpiece shouldn’t be more than 12” wide!
How about chicken wire –
very farm, yes? – baskets and various combinations of vegetables and
flowers. Above are three: Left: eggplant/tomato/long green
peppers/rex begonia leaves/purple scabiosa; Middle: radicchio/purple onions/
pink potatoes/ celadon cabbage/feverfew/ purple verbena; Right: savoy cabbage/
purple kale/ribbon grass/zinnias/brussel sprouts.
Trouble is you have to make
the basket. After some false
starts, I made a plan. It was time consuming, but easy. This was before Google. Taking a look now, there are various tutorials for
complicated basket making and many suppliers of baskets ranging from $8 to
$75+. Nothing like this “one-piece-wonder-for-pennies“…..
First the chix wire. Obviously the chickens have felt
persecuted as it now is called poultry netting! It comes in rolls in various
widths – 24” to 48”. Using a 24” roll, cut the width in half, lengthwise.
There is a handy wire down the
center - cut along it. This basket
(roughly 13” D by 23” H handle) requires a 5-6’ length x 12” wide.
It is really a fold, crimp,
bend and then fold over the handle and attach. We are going for insouciance here rather than perfection! The wire is very forgiving and the
little ends – though ouch! – bend around and hold the whole thing. I wanted all the handles to be slightly
twisted and bent differently, so they are squashed and manipulated. Easier to actually do than to
explain or draw.
Best is, you can see right
through it. However, that very
quality makes it hard to see in a photograph.
After the wedding, the baskets
came back to me and they have been used often in many colors, up and down the
East Coast. At a Rare Plant
Auction donor luncheon at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, the theme encompassed
the spring flowers that were blooming outside in the gardens and woodland. The staff brought us armloads of them
to make the centerpieces.
A rehearsal dinner with a
Spanish theme used black baskets with bright carnations and black fans.
The copper color is my
favorite finish. Design Master makes
the best spray paint for this kind of project. This basket holds the fruits of this season – ornamental
gourds – plus some flowers from another design. They are tucked into a glass spice jar filled with water and
nestled between the gourds.
Curving bear grass echoes the shape of the basket.
Cheers!
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