Broom-making isn't as hard as I thought! You can make one with bush branches and vines!

Today I fulfilled a childhood dream: I made brooms!

As a kid, I always would grab random ferns and try to sweep around my "house" in the woods (my house was just a little, leaning alder tree. But, I pretended it was my nature home!). As you can imagine, ferns as brooms just didn't work out. Today my daughter asked for a broom....so I made her one! And then I made another!

Historically many brooms were made with birch &/or heather branches or other branches. You dry all the branches and then tie them to your stick. I happened to have trimmed a bunch of red huckleberry bushes in the spring, and they were all dry.



I watched this video, and it showed how to make a broom with "broom corn" (sorgum) and how the bristles were seperated into four bundles, and each bundle then attached to the handle.



I found that the long, very skinny blackberry vines worked much better as "twine" than the thicker/healtheir blackberry vines. I ended up removing the above vine and using a skinnier one (it was much less prone to cracking and breaking)



Then, like in the above video, I wrapped the bristles with vine, and then wove the vine between the bristles to stablize them better.



It's holding up great against violent sweeping from my daughter.



My daughter requested a broom with softer bristles. I learned on this page that brooms can also be made with weeds. I had a bunch of nipplewort that had gone to seed and were naturally dried out by all this hot weather. I mixed those in with the thin huckleberry branches.



To make it easier, I sewed it together with hemp twine I'd been given. This made it a lot easier to get a more consistent and tighter broom.



My neighbors had given my kids their old play cabin. Over time, I've been making little things for her cabin. I wove a "cleaning rag" out of rushes, and made her a rush basket. Now she has brooms for her cabin!



They work great for adults, too. My husband joined my daughter in sweeping the patio!



Broom making is fun! Now my daughter has the wildcrafted broom I wanted as a child, and I don't need to worry about her leaving it out in the elements. If it falls apart, it just becomes part of nature and I can make another.

These rustic brooms also work for sweeping our patio. I might just make an adult-sized one for me!

Wonderful broom making! We have an abundance of sedge and blackberries growing here. I might try fashioning a broom with the sedge using your tutorial.

I'd love to see your brooms, Angela! I just realized it's the perfect season for making rustic brooms. Not only are they handy, they count as fall decor

I finally got a chance to sand and oil my daughter's brooms, and I love how they look!

(Halloween is right around the corner.)

Jordan Holland wrote:(Halloween is right around the corner.)

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True! And now does seem to be a good time to make brooms, too. At least in my area, there's plenty of dry branches and weeds outside just begging to be turned into fantastic--and useful!--Halloween decor!