overshot weaving definition manufacturer

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.

It is thought that overshot was brought over from Europe with the early arrivals to the New Land. Settlers brought many ideas and tools with them and adapted them to the new life here. With a colder climate and long winters, overshot blankets meant you had a thick stable cloth, woven on four shafts, that kept the sleeper warm and also served as a decorative bed covering.

Lets get back to our weaving with overshot and some of the basics with the four shaft variety. I need to point out here that these are simple guidelines and by no means complete. Just a small primer to pique your interest. I will post reading / study material list at the end. These notes are based on an overshot study I undertook some years ago.

Most new weavers are introduced to overshot at an early newbie weaver stage and usually start with a draft from Marguerite Davison"s classic: A Handweaver"s Pattern Book.Itsstill available to purchase after all these years. The drafts in this book are for sinking shaft looms such as counterbalance looms. You can flip the tie up for jack looms. If you don"t, it means you will be weaving the pattern upside down, which isn"t a problem but it would be nice to see the front as you weave. This little detail would make it confusing for new weavers starting on overshot for the first time, in addition to handling two shuttles!

Overshot is a twill derivative using two threads to create a unit block. This means you can have four blocks on four shafts. One thread in each block, is shared by the next block. This one thread in common creates half units in between blocks of either all pattern or all tabby. (This can be expanded through to eight shafts but we"ll stick with four shafts for this post) See what I mean by this in the picture below:

Overshot is actually two pieces of cloth, being woven simultaneously; one is a tabby or plain weave cloth, the second is the pattern that "over-shoots" the plain weave. You throw one shuttle for the plain weave and a second shuttle for the pattern weft, beating *very* firmly between each shot. If you were to take away the pattern weft, you would find a perfectly balanced 50/50 plain weave cloth. The pattern weft should compact well but be "lofty" to cover and produce blocks of solid colour with no plain weave peeking through. Normally the pattern weft is twice the size of the tabby yarn. Traditionally, cotton for tabby and with wool for pattern.

I keep the "odd" tabbies of treadles one and three to enter from the left hand side, and the "even" tabbies of treadles two and four from the right hand side. Also I work with both shuttles, tabby and weft, on one side of the warp. If you end up with divided shuttles then you have a treadling error to find!. The shuttles can be awkward to coordinate at first but you soon develop a rhythm. Be aware that many overshot drafts may say "use tabby" but don"t show it in the treadling. Then there are some that don"t mention the tabby at all. They are assuming you know to insert it.

The majority of overshot is woven "as drawn in" which means you repeat the exact threading as your treadling. Old drafts say "tromp as writ" which is the same thing.

Twill fashion is where you treadle a block over again to produce exact squares. This may be more repeats than is in the threading. You can also follow twill treadlings such as: rosepath ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 4, 3, 2, 1), point twill (1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1) , or broken twill (1, 2, 4, 3). Its then called overshot treadled as rosepath, or treadled as summer and winter. There are many other ways to vary the treadling and these all make very pretty borders! The following examples are from my first level of the Guild of Canadian Weavers Test. I took portions of the treadling and created these border patterns. They had to have a purpose for being woven. Click to enlarge...

When designing overshot patterns you can place many identical units together and then continue through to other blocks but the turning point block in your design will have an uneven number of threads. When treadling, the turning blocks are treadled one extra repeat.

So besides bed coverlets, what else can you make with overshot? I have seen beautiful modern looking table runners, scarves, overshot style borders on placemats and towels. I saw a beautiful (apparently) plain weave table cloth that had inlaid overshot motifs scattered like stars! They looked like snowflakes on the royal blue cloth.

I always thought it would be a neat challenge to weave overshot and have it look totally modern and comfortable in today"s home. ( Its on my "to-do" list..)

So if you have followed me through to this point and are now thinking it might be nice to try some overshot study yourself. Perhaps try inventing some borders for towels? Here are a few books on overshot that are on my library shelf:

Cloth is woven on a grid of vertical warps and horizontal wefts. But, with a bit of knowledge about designing weaving drafts, you can use these rectilinear elements to create smoothly flowing lines in your woven fabric.

In this article, I focus on designing with overshot blocks in order to create flowing curves large enough to be seen at a distance. I will also discuss "weaving as overshot" which is a method of applying overshot techniques to other weave structures and, finally, finish up with some strategies for designing curves in any weave structure.

In the twill draft above, the diagonal lines are only three threads apart, which might be too subtle an effect. To make the scale of your design larger, you can use a diagonal progression of weave-structure blocks instead of individual threads. The following draft shows an example of a diagonal progression using overshot blocks on four shafts.

Overshot is a weave structure creating a plain-weave cloth with decorative supplementary weft floats. These floats lie on top of (float over) the ground cloth. If you pull out all of the pattern weft threads, you are left with a plain weave cloth formed by the warp and the tabby weft. There are never any warp floats because of the tabby weft.

Weaving software is very helpful for testing hues and values for weft yarns to use with your warp. If you choose to weave overshot with a single shuttle, choose a contrasting value to the warp for a subtle design but faster weaving.

If you put the curve in your threading, the waves travel across the fabric horizontally, in the direction of the weft. You can see this in the overshot draft below.

Another disadvantage to putting the curves in the threading is that it limits your ability to improvise curved designs organically at the loom. It"s easy to change treadling patterns during weaving. Changing the threading, however, is a much more involved process.

I learned how to make curves by studying a traditional overshot draft called Blooming Leaf (page 133 in A Handweaver"s Pattern Book by Marguerite Davison). In this draft, the treadling maintains a diagonal progression but the scale changes to make the shape "bloom" and undulate.

[Note: When I create overshot drafts, I place the first pattern block on treadle three; I like to weave the tabby picks with my left foot (alternating between treadles one and two) and use my right foot (on the remaining treadles) to weave the pattern weft and create the design.]

Now that you know how to create curves, undulations, and reflected curves, you have the tools you need to create any kind of curve or diagonal line in four-shaft overshot. For a challenge, try making a long curve followed by a short curve, like a meandering river.

The methods described above also work for overshot on six, eight, ten, or more shafts. As you add additional shafts to your design, you gain the ability to create smoother and more dramatic curves.

Below is an example of an eight-shaft overshot threading; in this case a diagonal progression with a point and mirror symmetry. My treadling in this draft is an S-shaped curve. This is just one example of the many different curves you can weave on this threading.

Because the underlying structure of overshot is plain weave, any threading which can produce plain weave can theoretically be woven as overshot, alternating tabby and pattern weft.

I wove the draft above using a 20/2 silk sett at 30 epi. I chose to sett the yarn this densely so I could weave both an overshot and twill version on the same warp. You can see the resulting cloth in the picture below.

How do I weave as overshot when my sett is more appropriate for twill? I use a tabby weft that is much finer than the warp, in this case 140/2 silk from Lunatic Fringe.

Other times I choose to weave as overshot because the floats show off the pattern-weft yarn, such as the handspun wool used as the pattern weft in the cloth below.

It is easy and fun to make up a curved treadling at the loom, especially when weaving as overshot. Even after forty-two years of weaving, I still enjoy working with long, non-repeating treadlings; watching the curves grow and change as I weave. Instead of memorizing a sequence and repeating it carefully, I watch the design and think about where I want the next curve to go.

A side benefit of weaving long, undulating curves instead of small, repeated patterns is that a small variation in a repeat will stand out, but design variations are normal in organic curves.

The drape of overshot fabric is not as fluid as that of a twill fabric. So for a scarf or shawl I might choose a structure other than overshot. Fine silk, however, has such nice drape that I can weave as overshot and still get good results.

With weaving software, it is easy to create curved overshot designs. Simply draw a freehand curve in the treadling—smoothing it out if necessary—and then add the tabby shots. Once you have the general idea from designing drafts, you can improvise new curved designs at the loom.

For other weave structures, creating a profile draft can be helpful. A profile draft is a design template that represents the woven design at one level of abstraction. To convert a profile draft into a weaving draft, you replace each block in a profile draft with the appropriate block of a given weave structure. You can, therefore, express a single profile draft in many different weave structures: overshot, summer-and-winter, Bronson lace, huck lace, double weave, etc.

Profile drafts with smooth, flowing curves are also useful for learning how to design graceful lines. Weaving software helps because you can quickly create and edit drafts. None of the weaving programs I"m familiar with have an option to create "graceful" or "smooth" curves. So you"ll have to train your hand and eye, but this comes with practice.

I like smooth, flowing curves that are visible at a distance. So I look for structures that give me the maximum number of pattern blocks to design with. Generally I use weave structures where I have as many pattern blocks as there are shafts on my loom. On a four-shaft loom, I use crackle, overshot, advancing and network-drafted twills, advancing points, turned taqueté, rep, and shadow weave.

If you work with graph paper, remember to check the repeats, i.e., transitions, in the threading and treadling to make sure there aren"t gaps or discontinuous areas that affect the flow of your curve. In weaving software, you can do this easily by zooming out the view to check the draft over several repeats.

There were ten of us in the class, and we rotated, weaving a new sample at each loom. Marjie shared her knowledge of the patterns we sampled, and I came away with an even greater interest in this subject in addition to a binder filled with samples. There really is no greater way to learn than a hands-on workshop. I am already preparing to wind a warp for a dimity project. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

One interesting piece of information I learned is that overshot is a fairly modern term. Originally this type of weaving would have been referred to as floats or floatwork. It seems that many people are returning to this original terminology, though the weaving world has thus far shown little interest in making the change back. Personally, I like it. Floatwork sounds a bit less frenetic than overshot – as though I’m peacefully hitting my mark rather than missing it in a wild fashion.

When I first considered writing this article, I wasn’t confident enough with my weaving vocabulary to write something that a true beginner might actually understand. The information out there assumed, and still assumes, a certain level of weaving knowledge. I learn best by seeing something demonstrated, not by trying to translate written instructions. So how does one write an article for people like me? Let’s start with some basic terminology.

Floatwork, formerly known as overshot which was originally known as floatwork, is a block design traditionally woven on four shafts where a heavier pattern yarn floats above a plain weave ground cloth and creates a raised pattern. Your plain weave background cloth is woven using a finer yarn in your warp and in every other weft pick (these weft picks being the ‘use tabby’ part of your pattern.)

This finer yarn is hidden in places by the thicker yarn floats, blended in places with the thicker yarn (as plain weave) creating areas that are shaded (referred to as halftone), and woven across itself to create delicate areas of plain weave. Most of us think of antique coverlets when we hear ‘overshot.’

For some reason the term tabby has always annoyed me. It made me think of cats (I’ve got two – one of whom decided to take my seat when I got up to get a quick snack – and I love them both dearly) not weaving until I looked up the origin of the word on etymonline.com.

Back to business. Tabby is a plain weave pick that anchors your pattern pick in place. When weaving floatwork, every other weft pick is tabby. Your pattern pick needs the tabby pick to stabilize the cloth and keep the pattern picks from becoming distorted. This also means that you are working with two shuttles, one holding your tabby yarn and one holding your pattern yarn. This two-shuttle thing can be a bit awward at first, but you’ll get the hang of it with a little practice.

Here is the thing about floatwork that really helped it to make sense for me. It is basically a twill weave. As Mary Black puts it, “An examination of an overshot draft shows it to be made up of a repetitive sequence of the 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4, and 4 and 1 twill blocks”.

Let’s look at the pattern picks only. When weaving, your pattern blocks should overlap by one thread. This creates a pattern that flows from unit to unit instead of making a sharp step. It also means that the last thread of a given block is the first thread of the next block, and as you are initially threading your loom, your threads will move from odd shaft to even shaft.

You can find it listed in the chapter or sub-chapter entitled ‘Notes on the Overshot Drafts.’ As someone who generally cheers on the underdog, I was drawn to this pattern without a name.

Here is a list of books and magazines that might be of interest if you’d like to learn more about floatwork/overshot. Many of these references include patterns in addition to thorough instructions.

Atwater, Mary Meigs. The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Handweaving. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928. Just scored a first edition on ebay for $9! I now have three copies and am seriously in love with this book (taken with a grain of salt as she is rather traditional.)

If you can find this issue anywhere, I’d recommend picking it up. It’s full of great information on historic weaving, but also has a super article on understanding and writing drafts by Debbie Redding (aka Deborah Chandler).

Many years ago, I finally got to try weaving. I took the Beginning to Weave workshop through the Ottawa guild. At that time, 1989, the OVWSG did not have a studio space to house what guild equipment we had acquired. (The Guild had an old second-hand 100 inch loom and 6 or 7 table looms. There may have been a floor loom too but I was distracted by the 100 inches of loom, so do not remember). All the looms lived in one of our guild members’ very big basements. On weekends, she either taught weaving workshops or hosted weavers working on the 100 inch loom. It sounded like a busy basement! I remember 4 weekends of driving to a little town just east of Ottawa. I took the table loom home each week to do homework. I still remember the sound of the mettle heddles rattling as I drove down the highway, back and forth to the classes. Then I think there were two more weekends of Intermediate weaving and Dona sent me off and I was weaving!

It all starts with yarn, wind it carefully, attach it to the back beam, wind on, thread the heddles, slay the reed, tie on to the front beam, check the tension and then start to weave. It sounds like a lot of work but it is all worth it as you start to pass the shuttle through the shed and the cloth begins to appear. Weaving was like Magic! From a pile of string to POOF, actual cloth!!!

During the workshop, I found pickup seemed strangely familiar as my brain watched my fingers happily lifting and twisting threads for the various lace and decorative weave patterns. The other thing that my brain went “ooh this is cool!” was Overshot. It is a weave structure that requires a ground and a pattern thread, (two shuttles). One is fine like the warp and the pattern thread is thicker and usually wool. I was still reacting to wool so I used cotton for both.  My original goal was to draft and weave a Viking textile for myself but I put that aside for a moment, I will get back to that later.

The first thing I wove after my instruction was a present for my Mom. she had requested fabric to make a vest. I looked through A Handweaver’s Pattern Bookby Marguerite Porter Davison and found an overshot pattern that I thought we both would like. I wove it in two shades of blue (Mom’s favourite colour), at a looser thread count than usual. (Originally the overshot weave structure was used to make coverlets, so were tightly woven and a bit stiff, while I liked the pattern I wanted the fabric to be much more drapey.) Even worse, I did not want it to be as hard-edged in the pattern as it was originally intended so I tried a slub cotton as a test and loved it.

In the Exhibition The Inkle band, hanging beside the overshot, I wove much more recently. I used an Inkle loom and a supplemental warp thread. This means weaving with an extra separate thread that was not part of the main warp on the loom.  I used a yarn with a fuzzy caterpillar-like slub.

You may be able to see how I wove the weird slubby supplemental warp. The yarn is weighted and left hanging over the back peg of the Inkle loom. It comes over the top peg (usually labelled B in diagrams) and floats above the weaving.  In the areas where the Caterpillar (Slub) is not present I catch the yarn with the shuttle and weave it into the band. In the area the caterpillar appears I would leave the yarn above the warp and then start weaving it in again as I reached the end of the caterpillar. I hope that explanation doesn’t sound like mud and makes a bit of sense. Using a supplemental warp on an Inkle loom is not quite normal but it is a lot of fun.

I was going to tell you about my original goal in learning to weave, the mysterious Fragment #10 from a Viking excavation from around the year 1000, but  I have likely confused you with weaving enough for one day. So I will save that for another chat. (don’t forget the Inkle loom I would like to tell you a bit more about that in another post too. I promise I will get back to felting in the not-too-distant future)

The origin of the technique itself may have started in Persia and spread to other parts of the world, according to the author, Hans E. Wulff, of The Traditional Crafts of Persia. However, it is all relatively obscured by history. In The Key to Weavingby Mary E. Black, she mentioned that one weaver, who was unable to find a legitimate definition of the technique thought that the name “overshot” was a derivative of the idea that “the last thread of one pattern block overshoots the first thread of the next pattern block.” I personally think it is because the pattern weft overshoots the ground warp and weft webbing.

Overshot gained popularity and a place in history during the turn of the 19th century in North America for coverlets. Coverlets are woven bedcovers, often placed as the topmost covering on the bed. A quote that I feel strengthens the craftsmanship and labor that goes into weaving an overshot coverlet is from The National Museum of the American Coverlet:

Though, popular in many states during the early to mid 19th centuries, the extensive development of overshot weaving as a form of design and expression was fostered in rural southern Appalachia. It remained a staple of hand-weavers in the region until the early 20th century. In New England, around 1875, the invention of the Jacquard loom, the success of chemical dyes and the evolution of creating milled yarns, changed the look of coverlets entirely. The designs woven in New England textile mills were predominantly pictorial and curvilinear. So, while the weavers of New England set down their shuttles in favor of complex imagery in their textiles, the weavers of Southern Appalachia continued to weave for at least another hundred years using single strand, hand spun, irregular wool yarn that was dyed with vegetable matter, by choice.

And, due to the nature of design, overshot can be woven on simpler four harness looms. This was a means for many weavers to explore this technique who may not have the financial means to a more complicated loom. With this type of patterning a blanket could be woven in narrower strips and then hand sewn together to cover larger beds. This allowed weavers to create complex patterns that spanned the entirety of the bed.

What makes overshot so incredibly interesting that it was fundamentally a development of American weavers looking to express themselves. Many of the traditional patterns have mysterious names such as “Maltese Cross”, “Liley of the West”, “Blooming Leaf of Mexico” and “Lee’s Surrender”. Although the names are curious, the patterns that were developed from the variations of four simple blocks are incredibly intricate and luxurious.

This is only the tip of the iceberg with regard to the history of this woven structure. If you are interested in learning more about the culture and meaning of overshot, check out these resources!

The National Museum of the American Coverlet- a museum located in Bedford, Pennsylvania that has an extensive collection of traditional and jacquard overshot coverlets. Great information online and they have a “Coverlet College” which is a weekend series of lectures to learn everything about the American coverlet. Check out their website - coverletmuseum.org

Textile Art of Southern Appalachia: The Quiet Work of Women – This was an exhibit that traveled from Lowell, Massachusetts, Morehead, Kentucky, Knoxville, Tennessee, Raleigh, North Carolina, and ended at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. The exhibit contained a large number of overshot coverlets and the personal histories of those who wove them. I learned of this exhibit through an article written by Kathryn Liebowitz for the 2001, June/July edition of the magazine “Art New England”. The book that accompanied the exhibit, written by Kathleen Curtis Wilson, contains some of the rich history of these weavers and the cloth they created. I have not personally read the book, but it is now on the top of my wish list, so when I do, you will be the first to know about it! The book is called Textile Art of Southern Appalachia: The Quiet Work of Women and I look forward to reading it.

The threading here is the traditional point twill. Waffle weave are not only on point twill threading’s, but also on Rose path and broken twill threading, as well as Huck, Monk’s Belt, and Overshot. The tie-up involves tying two treadles for plain weave, and tying the rest to lift (or sink) three shafts or one. This creates the floats, which can be seen in the close up view of fabric. The treadling is tromp as writ, which simply means treadling in the same pattern as the threading draft, that means treadling one through four and reverse. A combination of warp and weft floats create the “waffles.”