Many years ago, soon after we were married, my late mother-in-law bought us this winnowing basket from a street vendor. She liked the sentiment but also the spelling mistake.
We also loved it and it has been beside our front door ever since.
I recently took a ribbon weaving class and, inspired by
Trekky’s QRcode, I decided to up-date the basket by replicating the message, complete with misspelling, in a ribbon weave QR code.
http://azonmedia.com/qrcode-generator was used to create the QR code from the text.
I pinned a piece of iron-on interlining with the glue side up onto a cardboard base, pinned my white ribbons on top and then wove the black ribbons going the other way.
I found it quite difficult as the QR pattern did not really lend itself to regular weaving. Some of the white ribbons were left hanging for several rows. This picture shows where I cheated and cut the black ribbon and attached white to either end just so I could weave it on top of the white to hold it down. Also the satin ribbon was very slippery and really did not like to stay put if it was not being held down by regular over and under weaving.
When I had finished I ironed the ribbon while it was still pinned, to fix it to the interlining. I then removed the pins and carefully flipped it over to iron on the reverse side, to make it more secure, and finally used some black satin scraps to make a border. It is backed with some old calico and the edges are bound with black satin bias tape. It needs ironing again and I will need to frame it if I am going to hang it outside next to the original.
The silly thing is that, whereas the basket can be read by anyone – even with its misspelling – no one in our household has any way of reading the QR code.
So I don't even know if it has worked.
Perhaps the old ways were better after all.
P.S. The spider is not real. It is a metal work spider my daughter put there to scare me.
