Pine Needle Basket - the stone

Delighted Hands asked what was in the center of the basket, and since there might be others wondering about it, or the structure of the basket, I thought I should explain more in another blog post.  The centerpiece of the basket is a Dalmation Jasper cabachon, that is glued to faux leather that has a fabric backing, like Pleather.  The first row of pine needles are stitched to the pleather, as close as you can get to the stone, and the spacing of the stitches in that first row radiate out to the edges of the basket, and I know mine isn't perfect, but found it difficult to un-stitch, and it seemed to leave marks.  I kept the basket small, it is quite a bit smaller than the sample that Nadine makes in her video, and I would think that if you were to make a huge basket, you might be able to double the stitches at some point, to keep them from getting too far apart.

Here's a picture from the top: