overshot weaving technique factory

While it looks like it would be a very time-intensive and difficult technique to weave – it really isn’t! You just have to understand how and why it works the way it does. (We will get to that.)

In its simplest form – overshot is a weaving technique that utilizes at least 2 different types of weft yarns and floats to create a pattern. These patterns are often heavily geometric.

Ground weft– plain weave pattern that is used between each row of your overshot pattern. This plain weave gives the textile structure and allows for large areas of overshot to be woven without creating an overly sleazy fabric. Without the use of a ground weft on an overshot pattern, the weaving would not hold together because there would not be enough warp and weft intersections to create a solid weaving.

They were most popular though in southern Appalachia and continued to be so even after textile technologies advanced. When other parts of colonial America moved to jacquard weaving, the weavers of southern Appalachia continued to weave their overshot coverlets by hand.

Since the overshot coverlets were most often woven at home on smaller looms they usually had a seam down the middle where two woven panels were sewn together.

The thing about overshot is that no matter the application, it is pretty impressive. Perhaps that is just my opinion, but due to how complex it can look, I feel that it is pretty safe to say.

Just because it was originally used for coverlets, does not mean it can only be used for coverlets. Changing aspects of the pattern like the colors used, or the way you use your ground weft can drastically change the look and feel of your weaving.

In the image below you can see the ground weft is not the same color throughout. Instead, I wove the ground weft as discontinuous so that I could add extra pattern and design into the weavings. In this case, you may be wondering how to deal with your weft yarns when they are in the middle of the weaving and not at the selvage.

The discontinuous weft yarns will float onto the back of the weaving until you are ready for them in their next pick. This does make your overshot weaving one sided since it will have vertical floats on the back. Keep this in mind if you want to try this technique out.

Also seen in the image above, the overshot yarn that I used was not all one color! This is a really simple way to get extra dimension and interest in your overshot if that is something you are looking for.

This makes it simple to be able to only weave overshot in certain parts of your weaving. If you want to do this then you can continue to weave your plain weave across the entire width of your weaving, but only weave overshot in specific areas. This creates a overshot section that functions similar to inlay.

Since the overshot pattern is strongly influenced by the weft yarns that are used it is important to choose the right yarns. Your weaving will be set up to the specification needed for a balanced plain weave. Make sure you understand EPI in order to get the right warp sett for your overshot weaving.

The ground weft used is almost always the same yarn as your warp. This allows the overshot weft to really be able to shine without contrasting warp and weft plain weave yarns.

In order to get the full effect of the overshot, it must be thick enough that when you are weaving your pattern it covers up the ground weft between each pass. If it is not thick enough to do this, it will still be overshot, but the full effect will not be seen.

What this warp thread does is serve as an all-purpose selvedge that does not correspond with your pattern. Instead, you would make sure to go around this warp thread every time to make sure that you are able to weave fully to the selvedge. Without this, your overshot weft will float awkwardly on the back of your weaving whenever the pattern does not take it to the edge.

I have mentioned this book multiple times because it really is such a great resource for any weaver looking to weave patterns of all types. It contains 23 pages of different overshot patterns (among so many other patterns) that you can set up on your floor or table loom.

Like a lot of different types of weaving, it is possible to do it on almost any type of loom that you have. The difference being that it might take you a little bit longer or require a bit more effort than if you did it on a traditional floor loom.

Weaving overshot on a frame loom or rigid heddle loom will require the use of string heddles and pick-up sticks that you have to manually use to create a shed.

Weave structures often have specific threading and treadling patterns that are unique to that particular weave structure and not shared with others. This book takes you out of the traditional method of weaving overshot patterns by using different treadling techniques. This will include weaving overshot patterns such as Summer/Winter, Italian manner, starburst, crackle, and petit point just to name a few. The basic image is maintained in each example but the design takes on a whole new look!

Each chapter walks you through the setup for each method and includes projects with complete drafts and instructions so it’s easy to start weaving and watch the magic happen! Try the patterns for scarves, table runners, shawls, pillows, and even some upholstered pieces. Once you"ve tried a few projects, you"ll be able to apply what you"ve learned to any piece you desire!

Author of the popular Overshot Simply and Shadow Weave Simply now shares her explorations of overshot weaving structures. Her teaching style is to break down the weave structure into its basic parts so that it is easy to understand, and then teach you how the parts work together to create the weave structure so that you can use any pattern or create your own.

This class is not for absolute beginner floor loom weavers. If you are a beginner, please start with my Introduction to Floor Loom Weaving class for all the basics.

A 4 shaft floor loom with 6 treadles. My floor loom has a 35" weaving width, but if your loom is smaller I have provided an alternative class project.

Kelly is a self taught weaver with a big passion for sharing the timeless art of weaving with others. Kelly is known for her calm and slow teaching style and she bases her classes on how she would have liked to have been taught. She designs all of her own projects and caters for levels from beginner to intermediate. Most available classes are for the rigid heddle loom, floor, table and inkle loom weaving.

Overshot: The earliest coverlets were woven using an overshot weave. There is a ground cloth of plain weave linen or cotton with a supplementary pattern weft, usually of dyed wool, added to create a geometric pattern based on simple combinations of blocks. The weaver creates the pattern by raising and lowering the pattern weft with treadles to create vibrant, reversible geometric patterns. Overshot coverlets could be woven domestically by men or women on simple four-shaft looms, and the craft persists to this day.

Summer-and-Winter: This structure is a type of overshot with strict rules about supplementary pattern weft float distances. The weft yarns float over no more than two warp yarns. This creates a denser fabric with a tighter weave. Summer-and-Winter is so named because one side of the coverlet features more wool than the other, thus giving the coverlet a summer side and a winter side. This structure may be an American invention. Its origins are somewhat mysterious, but it seems to have evolved out of a British weaving tradition.

Double Cloth: Usually associated with professional weavers, double cloth is formed from two plain weave fabrics that swap places with one another, interlocking the textile and creating the pattern. Coverlet weavers initially used German, geometric, block-weaving patterns to create decorative coverlets and ingrain carpeting. These coverlets contain twice the yarn and are twice as heavy as other coverlets.

Multi-harness/Star and Diamond: This group of coverlets is characterized not by the structure but by the intricacy of patterning. Usually executed in overshot, Beiderwand, or geometric double cloth, these coverlets were made almost all made in Eastern Pennsylvania by professional weavers on looms with between twelve and twenty-six shafts.

America’s earliest coverlets were woven in New England, usually in overshot patterns and by women working collectively to produce textiles for their own homes and for sale locally. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s book, Age of Homespun examines this pre-Revolutionary economy in which women shared labor, raw materials, and textile equipment to supplement family incomes. As the nineteenth century approached and textile mills emerged first in New England, new groups of European immigrant weavers would arrive in New England before moving westward to cheaper available land and spread industrialization to America’s rural interior.

Coverlet weavers were among some of the earliest European settler in the Northwest Territories. After helping to clear the land and establish agriculture, these weavers focused their attentions on establishing mills and weaving operations with local supplies, for local markets. This economic pattern helped introduce the American interior to an industrial economy. It also allowed the weaver to free himself and his family from traditional, less-favorable urban factory life. New land in Ohio and Indiana enticed weavers from the New York and Mid-Atlantic traditions to settle in the Northwest Territories. As a result, coverlets from this region hybridized, blending the fondness for color found in Pennsylvania coverlets with the refinement of design and Scottish influence of the New York coverlets.

Southern coverlets almost always tended to be woven in overshot patterns. Traditional hand-weaving also survived longest in the South. Southern Appalachian women were still weaving overshot coverlets at the turn of the twentieth century. These women and their coverlets helped in inspire a wave of Settlement Schools and mail-order cottage industries throughout the Southern Appalachian region, inspiring and contributing to Colonial Revival design and the Handicraft Revival. Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was often used in the production of Southern coverlets, both to grow and process the raw materials, and to transform those materials into a finished product.

Because so many coverlets have been passed down as family heirlooms, retaining documentation on their maker or users, they provide a visual catalog of America’s path toward and response to industrialization. Coverlet weavers have sometimes been categorized as artisan weavers fighting to keep a traditional craft alive. New research, however, is showing that many of these weavers were on the forefront of industry in rural America. Many coverlet weavers began their American odyssey as immigrants, recruited from European textile factories—along with their families—to help establish industrial mills in America. Families saved their money, bought cheaper land in America’s rural interior and took their mechanical skills and ideas about industrial organization into the American heartland. Once there, these weavers found options. They could operate as weaver-farmers, own a small workshop, partner with a local carding mill, or open their own small, regional factories. They were quick to embrace new weaving technologies, including power looms, and frequently advertised in local newspapers. Coverlet weavers created small pockets of residentiary industry that relied on a steady flow of European-trained immigrants. These small factories remained successful until after the Civil War when the railroads made mass-produced, industrial goods more readily available nationwide.

How to weave overshot on a frame loom + FREE PDF pattern! #overshot #overshotweaving #overshotweavingutorial #frameloomweaving #weavingtechinques #weavingpattern #diyweaving #sp...

Weaving rag rugs is an immensely satisfying process that enables you to use cast-off remnants of fabric - and a favorite old shirt or two - to make something beautiful and functional for your home. In this book, you"ll explore the fascinating history of rag weaving, learn how to weave a basic rag rug, master some of the most popular traditional designs, and experiment with contemporary techniques for weaving and embellishing rugs. Filled with scores of colour photographs of rugs by more than 40 artists from around the world, this book is a delight for weavers and non-weavers alike.

Weaving with rags developed out of genuine necessity centuries ago, when cloth was so highly treasured that it was often unwoven in order to reuse the thread. Although fabric is now commonly available at very low cost, weaving rag rugs remains an especially satisfying process. Transforming fabric remnants and old articles of clothing into beautiful, functional rugs yields a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, and it instills a sense of connection with history and tradition.

The basics of rag rug weaving have remained the same over the years, but the materials, designs, weave patterns, and color combinations have changed significantly. Today"s weavers have access to an abundant array of warp and weft materials, with a wide variety of fiber content, color, and pattern. There are few-if any-limitations on what you might incorporate into your design: plastic shopping bags, bread wrappers, nylon stockings, and industrial castoffs have all been included.

In this book, you"ll find the old and the new, traditional designs and contemporary approaches. Starting with a basic, plain-weave rug, it describes the materials and tools you"ll need, how to prepare your warp and weft, how to dress the loom, and how to weave with a rag weft. Then you"ll learn how to make more complex designs: stripes and plaids, block patterns, reversible designs, inlay motifs, tufted weaves, and many other variations. Applications of surface design techniques, such as immersion dyeing, screen printing, and painting with textile inks, are also explored. In the chapter on design, you"ll be guided through the process of choosing colors and deciding upon compositions for your rugs. You"ll also find several options for finishing your rug, from traditional braided fringe to a crisp, clean Damascus edge.

Once you feel comfortable with the basic techniques, you"ll want to sample the rag rug projects. There are a dozen in total, ranging in style from a subtle gradation of stripes to a vibrant tapestry inlay. You"ll find seaside motifs and square blocks, pale pastels and brilliant jewel tones. There is even a double weaving project chenille "caterpillars" are woven first, and these become the weft in a wonderfully textured chair pad. Each project is described in complete detail and accompanied by a weaving draft.

Throughout the book are full-color photographs of works by more than 40 artists from a dozen countries around the world. These images, together with how-to photography and detailed illustrations, will instruct you and inspire you to sample new directions in your weaving. A fascinating history of rag weaving complements this glorious collection of contemporary rugs.

If you are lucky enough to have a local shop nearby that supports weaving, please support them.  They can give you personal handholding when you need it, and they offer you the invaluable service of allowing you to get hands-on experience when picking your yarn, fiber, and equipment. Consider your loom, book, and other materials support of this service.

This page includes affiliate links from Amazon. I encourage you to support your local retailer, although I fully recognize not everyone is lucky enough to have a local book or weaving store nearby. The small income from these links help fund this site.

Weavers are fortunate to have an extensive literature of books on weaving techniques and woven cloth. “How-to” having books and illustrated exhibition catalogs that feature woven textiles are well-known month weavers. Less well known are the numerous readable and informative books on history, anthropology, and psychology that address the “what, why, and how” of both textiles in particular and craft in general. This talk will feature a discussion of three books that look at textiles and craft, and that ask questions such as “What is this object? Why was it made? Who made it? How was it used?

Beth Cederberg Guertinof Waltham, Massachusetts has been teaching both rigid heddle and multi shaft weaving for more than thirty-five years to children and adults. She enjoys designing projects to use up small amounts of yarns. She is a member of the Weavers’ Guild of Boston and is their treasurer. Beth was recognized by the WGB with the Helen Barrett Award in 2013 and the Celebration of Weaving Life Award in 2017. Beth owns and teaches weaving at her studio, A Place to Weave,in Waltham. Her website is www.aplacetoweave.com

Deborah Kaplanbranched into weaving 20 years ago from a background of handspinning and knitting. Her knowledge of materials informs her work. For a number foyers she has worked with collars weave and unusual materials such as copper, steel, under gummed silk, and horsehair to obtain open, gauzy, surprisingly effects. Most recently, she has been working with differential shrinkage for collapse. Thinking outside the box is a passion. Debbie’s work has been featured in SpinOff, Handwovenand the CW Journal,and has won awards at NEWS and Complex Weavers.

Make a card from the end of one of your weaving projects. Be creative! Bring it in a holiday wrapping for our Yankee Swap led by our own Sally Rianhard.

Framing allows a textile to stand on its own and gives it value. This power point presentation focuses on the many options we have to “frame” our work, from simple stripes to using pattern blocks and woven edges to isolate a woven piece from its background. We will look at twills, overshot and summer and winter weave structures, among others, as ways to provide well-designed boundaries. Proportion, color value and simplicity are also factors to consider.

Norma Smayda, master weaver, teacher and author, established the Saunderstown Weaving School in 1974. She learned to weave in Norway. Scandinavian design, colors and weave structures continue to be an important focus of her work. She also specializes in the contributions of William Henry Harrison Rose and Bertha Gray Hayes. She is the co-author of Weaving Designs by Bertha Gray Hayes.More recently, she has immersed herself in weaving with fan reeds and has written Ondulé Textiles: Weaving Contours with a Fan Reed.She received the Weavers Guild of Boston Distinguished Achievement Award and the New England Weavers Seminar Weaver of Distinction. She is a Past President of the Handweavers Guild of America and an Honorary Member of the Weavers Guild of Rhode Island.

Janet Austinlearned to weave at Massachusetts College of Art, in 1972. After weaving and selling functional items for 8 years, she felt a yearning to express herself in images, and earned an MFA in Painting at the University of NC, Greensboro. Almost accidentally the weaving and painting came together, and she has been weaving tapestries inspired by her paintings since 1983.

Jan served on the board of the American Tapestry Alliance, and as coordinator of Tapestry Weavers in New England. She exhibits regionally, nationally and internationally. She has been teaching tapestry for more than 30 years, speaks to guilds and art groups and demonstrates tapestry weaving whenever she can.

Anastasia Azurehand-weaves dimensional art exploring the grace of geometry. She shares her connection with our harmonious universe by creating contemplative wall sculptures and innovative jewelry. Her art emits radiant symmetry, providing centering as well as expansive energy. Combining metalsmithing with an ancient, Peruvian textile technique, she weaves wire and hand-dyed nylon on a traditional floor loom. Her designs create sophisticated serenity, beauty and wonder.

This post is the third in a series introducing you to common weaving structures. We’ve already looked at plain weave and twill, and this time we’re going to dive into the magic of overshot weaves—a structure that’s very fun to make and creates exciting graphic patterns.

Overshot is a term commonly used to refer to a twill-based type of weaving structure. Perhaps more correctly termed "floatwork" (more on that later), these textiles have a distinctive construction made up of both a plain weave and pattern layer. Requiring two shuttles and at least four shafts, overshot textiles are built using two passes: one weaves a tabby layer and the other weaves a pattern layer, which overshoots or floats, above.

Readers in the United States and Canada may be familiar with overshot textiles through woven coverlets made by early Scottish and English settlers. Using this relatively simple technique, a local professional weaver with a four-shaft loom could easily make a near-infinite variety of equally beautiful and complex patterns. If you’d like to learn more about overshot coverlets and some of the traditions that settlers brought with them, please see my reading list at the bottom of this article!

As it is twill-based, overshot will be very familiar to 4 shaft weavers. It’s made up of a sequence of 2-thread repeats: 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, and 1-4. These sequences can be repeated any number of times to elongate and create lines, curves, and shapes. These 2-thread repeats are often referred to as blocks or threading repeats, IE: 1-2 = block 1/A, 2-3 = block 2/B.

There are three ways weft appears on the face of an overshot cloth: as a solid, half-tone, or blank. In the draft image I’ve shared here, you can see an example of each—the solid is in circled in blue, the half-tone in red, and the blank yellow. Pressing down the first treadle (shafts 1 and 2), for example, creates solid tones everywhere there are threads on shafts 1 and 2, half-tones where there is a 1 or 2 paired with 3 or 4, and nothing on the opposite block, shafts 3 and 4. Of course, there’s not really nothing—the thread is simply traveling on the back of the cloth, creating a reverse of what’s on the face.

Because overshot sequences are always made up of alternating shafts, plain weave can be woven by tying two treadles to lift or lower shafts 1-3 and 2-4. When I weave two-shuttle weaves like overshot, I generally put my tabby treadles to the right and treadle my pattern picks with my left foot and my tabby with my right. In the draft image I’ve shared above, I’ve omitted the tabby picks to make the overarching pattern clearer and easier to read. Below is a draft image that includes the tabby picks to show the structure of the fabric.

Traditional overshot coverlets used cotton or linen for warp and plain weave wefts, and wool pattern wefts—but there’s no rule saying you have to stick to that! In the two overshot patterns I’ve written for Gist, I used both Mallo and Beam as my pattern wefts.

In the Tidal Towels, a very simple overshot threading creates an undulating wave motif across the project. It’s easy and repetitive to thread, and since the overshot section is relatively short, it’s an easy way to get a feel for the technique.

The Bloom Table Squares are designed to introduce you to a slightly more complex threading—but in a short, easy-to-read motif. When I was a new weaver, one of the most challenging things was reading and keeping track of overshot threading and treadling—but I’ve tried to make it easy to practice through this narrow and quick project.

Overshot works best with a pattern weft that 2-4 times larger than your plain weave ground, but I haven’t always followed that rule, and I encourage you to sample and test your own wefts to see how they look! In the samples I wove for this article, I used 8/2 Un-Mercerized Cotton weaving yarn in Beige for my plain weave, and Duet in Rust, Mallo in Brick, and Beam in Blush for my pattern wefts.

The Bloom Table Squares are an excellent example of what weavers usually mean when they talk about traditional overshot or colonial overshot, but I prefer to use the term "floatwork" when talking about overshot. I learned this from the fantastic weaver and textile historian Deborah Livingston-Lowe of Upper Canada Weaving. Having researched the technique thoroughly for her MA thesis, Deborah found that the term "overshot" originated sometime in the 1930s and that historical records variably called these weaves "single coverlets’ or ‘shotover designs.’ Deborah settled on the term "floatwork" to speak about these textiles since it provides a more accurate description of what’s happening in the cloth, and it’s one that I’ve since adopted.

This book contains the collected drafts and work of Frances L. Goodrich, whose interest in coverlets was sparked when a neighbor gifted her one in the 1890s. Full of charming hand-painted drafts, this book offers a glimpse into North Carolina’s weaving traditions.

Amanda Ratajis an artist and weaver living and working in Hamilton, Ontario. She studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and has developed her contemporary craft practice through research-based projects, artist residencies, professional exhibitions, and lectures. Subscribe to herstudio newsletteror follow her onInstagramto learn about new weaving patterns, exhibitions, projects, and more.

I have been weaving for the past few days (whoo hoo!). I am making cloth for my next batch of hand bound books. In the face of a million possibilities I decided to stick with something traditional. So, I picked a few miniature overshot designs with names I thought might be appealing and/or seasonal, such as Young Lovers’ Knot and Star of Bethlehem, did some math, wound a warp, dressed my loom, and got to work.

Anyway, the point is, the second repeat of the design looked very different from the first and I though I had made a mistake. “Hmm. Weird. Haven’t woven overshot in a while, must be rusty.” I checked my treadling carefully and everything was accurate. I used my trusty angle-measuring tool, set at 45 degrees, and my beat wasn’t consistent between the repeats; one repeat was more square than the other. I figured my beat was the problem, and that I would settle into a rhythm after a while. So I kept going, and finished up the red section. The problem didn’t go away. I didn’t mind the alternating look between pattern repeats because it was consistent and kind of rhythmical. In fact, I liked the little daisies in the corners of the less compact version of the pattern. Daisies, diamonds, daisies, diamonds. Not too bad.

Overshot is a weave structure where the pattern is created with long weft floats. They would be too unstable to be useful unless you secured the floats to a stable background. To make a stable background, you weave a pick (or row) of plain weave between each pick of pattern weft. Typically the plain weave thread is the same yarn as the warp, and the pattern weft is much thicker. Plain weave is a very stable weave structure because it has the maximum number of intersections of vertical (warp) and horizontal (weft) threads. For some reason that I’ve always meant to look up, plain weave is also called tabby, especially when it’s used in this way to alternate with pattern wefts.

Plain weave is made up of two alternating sheds: usually all the odd numbered shafts or harnesses work together, and all the even ones work together, and they alternate. They are sometimes called tabby a and tabby b to tell them apart. For overshot, you weave one row of pattern, then tabby a, the second row of pattern, then tabby b, the third row of pattern, back to tabby a, and so on.

Depending on your overshot pattern, one tabby tends to push the pattern weft floats apart, and the other tends to let them squeeze together. The pushy one can make the pattern pixelated, slightly elongated, or hard to see. The squeezy one helps the pattern pull together and look compact and distinct. The proper term for the squeezy tabby is “emboldening tabby.” You want the emboldening tabby. I was only getting the emboldening tabby on every other pattern repeat. Rats. After weaving the green section I decided, for the sake of consistency and for the sake of my good name as a master weaver, to fix it.