Tips on basketweave stamping

[ClayB]

A friend of mine asked if I could make her daughter a belt for Christmas. She brought the girl over to be measured and to pick out a pattern. After looking through several patterns, she decided she just wanted a basketweave design and her name on the back. I don't do a lot of basketweave, but this should be simple enough. Well, I made more mistakes on my first try at this belt than I have on anything I have done in a long time. The attached pictures show how NOT to do basketweave! The basketweave wanders all over the belt. I stamped over the border in several places. The border stamp isn't done the same on both sides of the name. The border around the name looks really bad to me. There may even be more mistakes. If you want to do it right, check out a basketweave tutorial made up by Jeff Mosby a few years ago. If you follow his instructions, it should turn out right the first time. You can find his intructions on the PSLAC site here

http://www.pslac.org/public/02_feb05.pdf

Jeff's instructions are clear and easy to follow. I redid the belt using Jeff's instructions and the second one turned out a lot better than the first one. I thought I had taken pictures of it too, but I cant find them on my camera.

Clay

[Romey]

Basket weaves are one of those things that are simple to do, difficult to do well. Being good at any repetitive pattern I found are easy to be out of practice for if not done often. First time I did a basket stamp it was very well done, second time, not so much, third time worse, very frustrating what I found was that rather then small errors blending into a large stamp pattern they stood out like a sore thumb often not caught till it was to late to fix, I see a few other mistakes on the belt but hey if second one came out better, chalk it up for experience. I can’t imagine that any worker of any skill or craft doesn’t have a bucket full of “Ah Sh*t†projects laying around. I do a similar lay out when basket stamping in that I lay out lines and such, even then especially with a smaller stamp its tough to keep it all straight and takes a careful hand to not over stamp at the edge, thank god for border stamps

[whinewine]

tandy does have a craftaid that helps in laying out various regular, repetitive designs. The number is #76600-00 ($5.99 ea) & it is listed as a geometric grid craftaid. Because it lays out a grid, it may be useful also in helping with a basketweave, although it specifically is designed to help properly align three sizes of craftool stamps (#69008, 69009 & 69011)). I hope this helps a little.