A satisfyingly chunky project for beginners and beyond
There is something deeply pleasing about a good basket. It holds things. It looks nice. It stays where you put it. In a world of ephemeral digital entertainment and disposable tat, a hand-crocheted basket is a quietly triumphant object.
I've been meaning to write about this for a while, because it's one of those projects that sounds more complicated than it is. People see a crocheted basket and assume some advanced technical wizardry has taken place. It hasn't. If you can do a basic crochet stitch — or are willing to learn one in about ten minutes — you can make a basket. A proper, sturdy, beautiful one. And because we're talking about T-shirt yarn, it works up fast. Very fast. You could genuinely finish one in an evening.
So here's the full guide.
Yarn: One or two balls of T-shirt yarn. Each ball is 100–120m, which is plenty for a medium-sized basket. T-shirt yarn is made from surplus factory T-shirts that would otherwise go to landfill or be incinerated — so you're crocheting with rescued material, which feels good. It's chunky, robust, and pleasingly tactile to work with.
Crochet hook: A large one — somewhere between 10mm and 15mm works well with T-shirt yarn. You want quite a bit of tension so the basket walls hold their shape.
Base (optional but brilliant): We sell wooden circular crochet basket bases in various sizes. Using one of these makes the bottom of your basket perfectly flat and stable, and means you can skip crocheting the base altogether and get straight to the fun part — the sides. Highly recommended for beginners.
Scissors and a blunt tapestry needle to weave in your ends.
That's it. Genuinely.
This is where T-shirt yarn earns its place as one of life's small joys. We have an extensive range of colours — from deep aubergine purple and navy through to pale cream and storm cloud grey. Because the colours come from surplus factory stock, some are genuinely one-offs that won't be repeated once they sell out. So if you see one that calls to you, don't dither.
A single colour is perfectly elegant. Two colours — say, alternating every few rounds — is very striking. It's up to you.
Attach your yarn to the edge of the wooden base by pushing your hook through one of the pre-drilled holes, catching the yarn and pulling up a loop. Chain one to anchor it, then work single crochet stitches through each hole all the way around. This gives you a neat starting row around the circumference of the base. Join with a slip stitch to complete the round.
From here you just work upwards, round by round.
Start with a magic ring (also called a magic circle). If you haven't done one of these before, there are loads of good video tutorials online and it genuinely takes about five minutes to get the hang of it.
Chain one, then work six single crochet stitches into the ring. Pull the ring closed. That's your centre.
Round 2: Two single crochet in every stitch. (12 stitches.)
Round 3: Single crochet in next stitch, two single crochet in following stitch. Repeat to end. (18 stitches.)
Round 4: Single crochet in next two stitches, two single crochet in following stitch. Repeat to end. (24 stitches.)
Keep working in this pattern — adding one extra plain stitch before each increase every round — until the base is the diameter you want. For a nice medium basket, somewhere between 18cm and 22cm across works well.
This is the satisfying bit. Once your base is done, stop increasing. Simply work single crochet in every stitch, round and round, without any increases at all. The sides will naturally rise up and start to form the walls of the basket.
A tip: at the transition from base to sides, work into the back loop only of the stitches in that first side round. This creates a clean, defined edge that separates the base from the walls. It's one of those small techniques that makes the finished basket look properly made.
Work straight until the sides are as tall as you like. For a bathroom basket, 10–12cm of sides is about right. For something more structural, go taller.
When you're happy with the height, fasten off and weave in your ends with the tapestry needle.
Tension matters more than usual with T-shirt yarn. Because it's thick and springy, loose stitches will produce floppy walls. Keep things fairly tight and the basket will stand up on its own. If it's going a bit wobbly, go down a hook size.
T-shirt yarn is forgiving. If you make a mistake a few rows back, it's easy to unpick. Don't be precious about it.
It doesn't ravel. Unlike wool, if the yarn gets nicked with scissors or wears through with use, it won't unravel catastrophically. It's a very practical material for something like a basket that might take a bit of a bashing in day-to-day life.
Washing: T-shirt yarn is cotton-based and machine washable, which is handy for a basket that might end up holding damp flannels in the bathroom or muddy bits and pieces in the hallway.
The honest answer is: almost anything that needs containing. Some ideas from our customers:
A fruit bowl in the kitchen. A magazine basket by the sofa. A plant pot holder. A bathroom basket for odds and ends. A toy basket in a child's bedroom. A log basket (for smaller logs — it won't hold a cord of wood, but it's very nice for kindling). A dog toy basket. A bread basket on the table.
Once you've made one, you will probably want to make several more. This is normal. The second one is even faster than the first.
We stock bag handles and craft accessories including wooden handles that can be attached to your finished basket to turn it into a bag. It's a very small extra step and takes the project from "useful domestic object" to "thing you might actually carry around in public feeling pleased with yourself."
T-shirt yarn is made from the offcuts and remnants of T-shirt production — material that the factories can't use for garments and would otherwise go to waste. There are no additional dyes used in the production of our yarn; the colours you see are the colours of the original fabric. So as well as making something beautiful and useful, you're keeping textile waste out of the bin.
Ten percent of our profits goes to Buy Land Plant Trees CIC, our community interest company that is buying and rewilding land in Cumbria. So your basket is also, in a very real sense, helping to plant woodland right here in the north of England.
It's a good basket to make.
Browse our full range of T-shirt yarns, wooden basket bases, and crochet hooks in the shop.
