“We think of baskets as being square or round and functional. This is totally decorative,” said Debbi Zvanut of Weisenberg Township.

Zvanut is well-known in the community for the baskets she weaves but only sells those made by request.

She said, as with many crafts, that the value is greater in time and materials than can be charged so she keeps them and sometimes gifts them.

Her decorative basket is a hot-air balloon. She crews for hot-air balloons and so was interested in trying to make a woven balloon. The basket won a first place in the medium basket class at this year’s Great Allentown Fair.

She also took first place in the large category and second in the small basket class.

Zvanut teaches basket weaving in the continuing education classes at the Northwestern Lehigh school.

The balloon is made with a Nantucket weave worked on a mold.

She takes classes in weaving and the teacher suggested using a flowerpot mold turned upside down to make the balloon.

The basket, which she named Clouds in the Sky, has a cherrywood rim and top.

The colored portions woven into the balloon represent the clouds.

The small basket, in which passengers would ride in a real hot-air balloon, is not sized to match the balloon as it would be too tiny.

When work is done on a mold, there needs to be a hole to keep the mold in place during work.

Zvanut uses either ivory or plastic to fill the holes. On the balloon it was ivory.

She has bits of ivory taken off the keys on an old family piano. The pieces were scrimshawed and the balloon has a butterfly on the piece used to seal it.

From conception to completion was a matter of two years with 100 hours of actual weaving.

This was her 10th year of exhibiting at the Great Allentown Fair.

Zvanut said she takes classes for the comradeship and the Wednesday Weavers meet at her house. Once a year, she attends a weaving convention.

“There are lots of people to meet and there is a display,” Zvanut said, adding that she took second place in the North Carolina Basketry Association.

There is also a Central Pennsylvania group and she was a founding member of the Lehigh Valley Basket Weavers.

One woven piece, a pair of earrings made of ash, she is especially proud.

She purchased the earrings at a fundraiser auction.

“I bid on them,” she explained. The tiny baskets are about three-eighths to one-half-inch square.

Zvanut attended a weaving class in Bwindi, Uganda, but there will be more about that in a future story.