Melinda West | West Gardens Basketry

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

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Porch Papermaking With Food Plants – Cardoon and Kale

May 14, 2025 By Melinda

The days are getting longer. Exquisite scents of growing plants fill the air. The pollen makes me cry, but it’s all worth it! Today I’d like to introduce you to an easy to grow garden plant for making strong, flexible paper. Cardoon is a perennial culinary plant in the artichoke family, with stalks harvestable early spring through mid summer. When … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artwork, Community, News, Plants and Places, Resources, Upcoming Tagged With: Cardoon paper, Helen Hiebert, Kale paper, Lichen, May Babcock, papermaking, Porch papermaking, spring

Paper from the Ditch – Weathered Reed Canary Grass

April 24, 2025 By Melinda

Most of the plant materials I work with tend to make dark papers. Western Red Cedar inner bark makes a lovely dark red-brown and most of the long leaves and grasses I use make papers that are shades of yellows, tan or greenish. I love the natural tones and shades and accept the fact that natural plant fibers will continue to change over time. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Plants and Places, Uncategorized, Upcoming Tagged With: Paper making, papermaking, Reed Canary Grass Paper

Late Winter Papermaking – Mixing Siberian Iris Leaves and Lichens

March 24, 2025 By Melinda

On the menu for papermaking - as late winter wind storms loosen lichens from the trees, dropping them all over the trails I walk along, I recognize this gift from the canopy above. On each walk I collect a pocketful of the beautiful lichens just so I can study their interesting structures more closely. But I also know from past experience that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artistic Uses of Plant Fibers, Artwork, Community, News, Plants and Places, Upcoming Tagged With: okra, papermaking, Siberian iris

Here’s What’s Cooking – Porch Paper Making

February 19, 2025 By Melinda

Hi Friends. I haven’t forgotten you are out there. In the midst of current affairs it is important to know there way more wonderful humans, like you, who are doing their best to be good citizens, good neighbors, good people, and to live creative and purposeful lives. Against the darkness of our political times, there are many examples of people … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Artistic Uses of Plant Fibers, Artwork, Community, My Teachers, News, Plants and Places, Resources, Upcoming Tagged With: abaca, additives, cellulose, cotton linter, embroidery hoops, fiber, Helen Hiebert, leaves, Paper making, papermaking, screen molds, Sword Fern, The Papermaker’s Companion, winter, winter work

Fireweed and Nettle Fiber Papers

September 15, 2021 By Melinda

It’s been fun and interesting experimenting with how to extract the cellulose fibers from various native, naturalized, and invasive plants that live in our gardens and all around our neighborhood. Because, like Stinging Nettle, Fireweed bast fiber was also traditionally utilized by the First Peoples of this region for cordage making, and it … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Community, News, Plants and Places, Upcoming Tagged With: cordage, fireweed, fish nets, nettle, Paper making, papermaking, traditional First People, tumlines

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Recent Posts

  • Local History – Interview With Barbara Ann Lawrence – Suquamish Tribal Cultural Teacher and Storyteller
  • Porch Papermaking With Food Plants – Cardoon and Kale
  • Paper from the Ditch – Weathered Reed Canary Grass
  • Late Winter Papermaking – Mixing Siberian Iris Leaves and Lichens
  • More Spring Porch Papermaking – With Ivy Leaves

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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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