This How-To walks you through the various steps to decorate one of our Knit & Starched Basket. The patterns are available in our Stitch 'n Starch Section of our Books & Patterns.

 STEP ONE

 Beginning at the center front, weave your ribbon around through the eyelets at the top of the basket. Tie into a simple bow. Take a loop of same or contrasting ribbon and create a crossed loop. Glue that into place. Don't worry about the ribbon tails right now. That should be done at the very end. You want some draping effect.

If you're using picot-edged ribbon as shown in this picture, begin weaving from the center back of your basket and coming toward the front on both sides. There will be less chance of damaging the picots of the ribbon when drawing them through the eyelets on your basket.

 STEP TWO

 Take two strands of pearls and glue them into place on top of the single loop ribbon. Don't catch the original bow's ribbon tails in that glue. You need those to 'drape'.

 STEP THREE

 On this sample, I used satin rose leaves, which are available at most crafting stores and floral supply houses. Clip the stems off, close to the base of the leaf. For our sample, I just glued them in a reverse-triangular shape. Depending on the flowers I use, sometimes I will have 4 or even 5 leaves, sometimes in varying sizes. Glue them over the looped ribbon and move the pearls aside so you don't catch them in the leaf glue. They need to drape.

 STEP FOUR

 Now choose your flowers and clip them as close to the base of the blossoms as you can. Do be cautious here -- you can end up cutting the vital wire that holds the blossom together! Glue you blosoms on top of the leaves. Prop your basket on it's side and allow the glue to thoroughly cool. Standing a basket upright before the glue has taken hold, could cause the blossoms to fall off.

 STEP FIVE

 Angle clip your ribbon ends to barely reach the bottom of the basket. The ribbons and pearls will swing nicely and your basket will be a big HIT!

I use shredded paper (no print!!), raffia, bunched-up tissue paper or dyed excelsior as fillers for my baskets. Check out party supply stores for the shredded paper in colors. It's usually cheaper there than at crafting stores. If you have a paper-shredder in your home, you can use up old wrapping paper as your shredding material. Please don't use newspaper such as the comics for shredding -- the print will come off on the basket and smudge terribly.

Trust me on this. I know. :-)