Melinda West | West Gardens Basketry

Growing, gathering, and weaving with plant fibers from the Pacific Northwest

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Hazelnut In Spring

June 3, 2022 By Melinda

I was invited to teach a Ribbed Basket Workshop this September at the Bainbridge Artisans Resource Network, or BARN. This is giving me the opportunity to slow down a minute and extrapolate some of the things I know about working with plants. Sometimes I take for granted what I’ve learned, because it’s what I do everyday, and it isn’t any more … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artwork, Community, News, Plants and Places, Weaving from the Wild, Workshops Tagged With: BARN, BARN workshops, hazelnut, Hazelnut shoots, Ribbed Basket Con, ribbed construction, Ribbed Garden Basket, Ribbed Gift Basket

Paper From Plants – A Lesson in Resilience

September 26, 2021 By Melinda

The word resilience comes to mind while making papers from plants. Heronswood Gardens is located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington State. It is owned and operated by the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and Heronswood is a wonderful place to contemplate the meaning of resilience. In 2019 Kara Horton and I received a grant from the Port Gamble … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artistic Uses of Plant Fibers, Artwork, Community, News, Plants and Places, Students, Workshops

Plants Have Fibers – And Other Good Lessons

September 9, 2021 By Melinda

Thank you for looking at this blog. I haven’t been writing much this past year, for various reasons, but I hope to share more with you in the coming months. Last year was dedicated to working on some projects I’d started, but never seemed to have the time to finish, like the Suquamish-Indianola Storytelling Project. I learned that sometimes … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artistic Uses of Plant Fibers, Artwork, Community, News, Plants and Places, Upcoming Tagged With: Heronswood Garden, inclusions, Kara Horton-Wright, Michelle Berg, Paper making, paper making workshop, papermaking, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Sue Smith, The Basketry School, wood Hyacinth

Bare Bones Abstracts

January 28, 2021 By Melinda

Bare Bones One by Melinda West

Those of you who are weavers, that work with plant materials you grow and gather yourself, likely understand that building a fine basket takes a lot of time. Sometimes it’s freeing to allow oneself to do a type of work that isn’t about the perfection of the weaving, but instead is more about allowing beautiful materials to breath, to gesture, like … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artwork, Community, News Tagged With: Bare Bones, Curly Willow, Fig, hazelnut, inner cedar bark, willow, Yew

Cedar Bark – Useful and Beautiful

December 6, 2020 By Melinda

Cedar Yarn Basket by Melinda West

There is something quite amazing about the qualities of the inner bark of the Western Red Cedar. These qualities have been understood by the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years. It means a lot to know that some people in todays easy shopping world, where a container for yarn is but one-click away on a computer or … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artwork, Plants and Places

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Recent Posts

  • Spring – It’s on the Way
  • Water Is Life – A Song Worth Hearing
  • Suquamish Elder Ed Carriere is a 2023 National Heritage Fellow
  • Our Sacred Obligation – A Story Worth Spreading
  • Basketry Program at BARN-Bainbridge Artisans Resource Network

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About Melinda

Forty years ago, while sitting on the beach playing with my young children, I made my first basket out of a pile of willow trimmings someone had tossed there. It looked wildly made like a crazy bird’s nest. While being together with my two sons on a beautiful Pacific Northwest shoreline, this simple experience of crafting with the natural materials at hand kindled a passion for creating forms using plant fibers. I thank my family, my community, and all my teachers for cultivating this gift in me.
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Melinda West and basket, Indianola WA

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