Amish Mending Basket | Wicker Darning & Sewing Notion Storage

• Handcrafted Quality: Handwoven from natural rattan reed over a solid hardwood bottom by an Old Order Amish family on the Iowa-Missouri border, and signed by the weaver who made it.
• What a Mending Basket Is: The small open basket that holds the mending pile and the tools to do it: the socks with a hole, the shirt missing its button, needles, thread, scissors, buttons and a darning egg, kept together by the chair so the mending gets done in odd minutes instead of piling up in a drawer.
• Low, Wide and Open: 11 1/2 inches across and 5 inches tall, with a flat bottom and sides that flare out, so everything in it is in view and in reach, and you can pick it up in one hand.
• Measures: 11 1/2" across x 5" tall. Contents not included.
• Three Trim Colors: Choose Plain, Wine & Blue, or Wine & Green. The color is woven in as dyed reed, not painted on.
• Optional Extras: A round wooden lift-off lid, a hand-sewn cotton broadcloth liner (Cream, Wine, Blue, or Green; machine washable), and protective feet are each optional and sold right on this page. The basket is complete without them.
• American Heritage: Handwoven in the USA and signed by the Amish weaver who made it. Backed by our lifetime guarantee, with free shipping and no-questions returns on every order.

A mending basket is the oldest kind of sewing basket there is. Before a sewing box had drawers and trays, there was a low basket by the chair with the week's mending in it, and a needle and thread on top, and this is that basket: 11 1/2 inches across, 5 inches deep, open, so the socks and the button jar are in plain sight and the job is never out of mind. It is the simplest basket in our sewing family and the one that gets used every day.

It is also, like most good baskets, not particular about its job. Helen bought two and uses "one for bread and one for chips," and wrote that she "still must order one for sewing." Anita gave hers at Christmas and "the Christmas person receiving it loved it also." Galen bought them for his daughters: "I loved the look and personalized care that went into the basket."

It is the same body as our Round Bread & Fruit Basket, which is why the round wooden lid and the broadcloth liner fit both; the lid turns it into a covered basket for the notions, and the liner gives the notions a soft cloth lining and comes out to wash. A basket this size is carried in the hand or the crook of an arm. If you want the notions sorted, the Vintage Sewing Basket gives every spool a peg; if you want a lid, handles and room for a whole project, the Round Sewing & Knitting Basket is the next size up; if you want a box for the table, the Craft & Sewing Organizer. The whole family is on the sewing baskets page.

An Old Order Amish family weaves this basket by hand on the Iowa-Missouri border, in the same community as the rest of our sewing baskets, and the weaver signs the bottom before it leaves the farm. Standard shipping is free, and rush delivery is offered at checkout when a birthday or Christmas is close. It ships gift-ready, with no prices in the box, a free gift note at checkout, and a short letter about the family who wove it. Like every basket we sell, it carries our lifetime guarantee, and returns are no questions asked.

Measures: 11 1/2" across x 5" tall