Weave Your Old Maps Together

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I'm a word nerd who loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon. I was an editor on the first 40 volumes of MAKE, and I love shining light on the incredible makers in our community. In particular, covering art is my passion — after all, art is the first thing most of us ever made. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for untouched powder fields and ideal alpine lakes.

Contact me at snowgoli@gmail.com or via @snowgoli.

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November 14th, 2012 16

One of the most popular projects on Make: Projects originated on the pages of CRAFT when it was a print magazine: the Woven Map Basket. Weaver Jane Patrick (who was previously editor of Handwoven magazine and is currently creative director for Schacht Spindle Company) wrote a simple how-to for taking old maps, slicing them, and weaving them into baskets. I’m a big fan of old school paper maps, particularly wilderness topo maps, and am thinking this would make a fun gift for my backcountry friends. While I would be remiss to chop up a perfectly good new map, I have no shortage of maps that have taken a beating on many treks, and this would be a great way to creatively recycle them. Of course you can use any paper you like: comics, yearbooks, magazines, etc., as seen in the second shot below. Jane even treated the surface of the basket on the right with melted beeswax for a muted, aged appearance.