Making Coiled Baskets with Repurposed Textiles - with Lora Bertolo

April 5, 2025, 12:30-4:30 PM
This is an in person workshop at the Craft Ontario Distillery Shop.
Registration: $50 for members, $65 for non-members.  

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn the coil making technique to make individual projects. All materials are provided. 

Lora will explain how to select and prepare repurposed textiles. She will show examples and demonstrate various techniques such as coiling a base and shaping around a jar to form a vessel, how to add handles and various tips to start and finish small projects. Participants can expect to learn how to coil by working with a needle and thread and a selection of textiles.

Lora Bertolo is a graduate of the TMU Fashion Design program. With years of creative experience, ranging from creating custom wedding gowns to producing a knitwear collection, it was in 2020 when completing a basket coiling workshop that she found her calling within the textile industry. 

Lora creates functional and fashionable, one of a kind bags, baskets, bowls and more! Being passionate about textiles and repurposing, she uses thrifted materials, including natural fibres from bedsheets, old clothes and even yarn that has been unraveled from sweaters.

Basket Coiling supports her values of sustainable and ethical fashion and satisfies her needs as a designer, maker and human. She loves to teach this craft as she believes that it has endless creative options. For her, the process is therapeutic and the more people that repurpose textiles, the better it is for everyone!