overshot drafts brands

Overshot is the most American and most Canadian of weave structures. I’m not saying that the U.S. and Canada are the only countries that can claim overshot or that they invented the structure. What I am saying is that weavers north and south took the overshot drafts brought over from Europe and made them their own.

To understand the reason for overshot’s popularity, you need to understand the weavers of pre-Industrial Revolution America and Canada. With the exception of those who worked on luxury, specialized fabrics, most weavers made household linens. The cloth needed to be strong and serviceable, and there was little room for experimentation or creativity—except, of course, for coverlets. Coverlets were functional items, but they also served the purpose of decoration. So, weavers of coverlets were free to play at the loom—and play they did.

The reason that weavers loved overshot then is much the same reason that many of us love it now—it’s a simple structure that produces complex patterning on just 4 shafts. With overshot, you can create circles, stars, flowers, and more. It’s also easy to take a draft and adjust it to create seemingly endless variations, which is exactly what happened during the 1700s and beyond. Household weavers would riff on drafts to create new designs, give them names, and then share the drafts with other weavers near and far.

In fact, you can find more delightful stories and names in Hall’s book, which is available for free here. The book, which contains a wealth of information on traditional coverlets and designs, is well worth a read. For further reading, I have to suggest Ozark Coverlets: The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History Collection, by Martha “Marty” Benson and Laura Lyon Redford. It’s my favorite book on coverlets, and it beautifully covers (no pun intended) the history of Ozark coverlet weaving and the lives of those weavers, and, best of all, it includes modern drafts of the designs.

Overshot is a magical structure. The first time you weave it you can hardly believe the cloth that grows on your loom. Traditionally used to weave bed coverings, overshot has many beautiful applications in today"s world, from useful household textiles to breathtaking works of art. This versatile weave is subject to endless variations. Here are a few of our favorite tips and a few truly spectacular projects, too! If you are inspired, come visit us and learn from a master weaver, Joanne Hall. See details below about her workshop.

A slouchy bag by FiberMusings on Weavolution pairs leftover BFL singles with sturdy Cottolin to create a fashionable yet functional multi-colored bag. The draft is a design from Ann Weaver"s Handweavers Pattern Dictionary, and it"s a great way to integrate Overshot techniques while making an eye-catching accessory!

Another project that caught our eye recently was a shower curtain shared by GailR@30 shared on Weaving Today - it"s nothing short of amazing (click here to see for yourself)! Consisting of thirteen different overshot pattern threadings woven in thirteen different treadlings, 169 different design effects are created based on designs from Osma Gallinger Tod"s book The Joy of Handweaving. As Gail noted on her project page, a great way to make each design stand out is to separate them with twill bands (even though it might mean a little more work in the process!)

Or, you may choose to elevate your weaving like the work of art it most certainly is, as Evaweave did with her Overshot Study pieces. These two miniature silk rugs look lovely in a frame, don"t you think? The overshot pattern was adapted from Overshot Weaving by Ellen Lewis Saltzman, complementing one another perfectly.

Think overshot is too difficult to try? Deb Essen thinks otherwise! Fiber artist, designer, and teacher, Deb is a passionate weaver who specializes in using overshot name drafts to create "secret messages" in cloth.

On her website, she explains: "Overshot is a weave structure and a draft is the weaver"s guide to creating patterns in cloth. Overshot name drafts assign the letters of a name or phrase to the shafts on a loom, creating a pattern that is unique. The one-of-a-kind patterns become a secret hidden message in the cloth and only those knowing the secret can break the code."

Deb lets you in on the secret with her clever kits, each with a hidden message. We"re particularly fond of her That"s Doable kit, which features Mountain Colors hand-painted yarns and, as the name would imply, is our first choice for those new to overshot weaving.

This collection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century weaving drafts from the Southern Highlands region of Appalachia. Text includes 112 overshot drafts and drawdowns, and 31 drafts and drawdowns for the all-white summertime cotton bedspreads called counterpanes. Color photos of the original samples are shown side by side with valuable modern translations of the drafts, which enable today’s weavers to make them.

A vibrant example of our weaving heritage, these drafts were originally gathered in the nine states of the Southern Highlands region between 1892 and 1918 by the legendary Frances L. Goodrich. Handwoven counterpanes and coverlets were important possessions, and often were the only item of beauty in the women’s otherwise impoverished living conditions. These are drafts Goodrich carefully collected but did not include in her classic Brown Book. Dozens of vintage photographs of Goodrich, the communities she served, and the women who invented the drafts help bring this part of our American craft heritage to life.

This book features the original sample collection and handwritten drafts of the talented, early 20th century weaver, Bertha Gray Hayes of Providence, Rhode Island. She designed and wove miniature overshot patterns for four-harness looms that are creative and unique. The book contains color reproductions of 72 original sample cards and 20 recently discovered patterns, many shown with a picture of the woven sample, and each with computer-generated drawdowns and drafting patterns. Her designs are unique in their asymmetry and personal in her use of name drafting to create the designs.

Woven by Rachel SnackWeave two overshot patterns with the same threading using this downloadable weave draft to guide you. This pattern features the original draft along with one pattern variation. Some yarns shown in the draft are available to purchase in our shop: 8/2 cotton, wool singles, 8/4 cotton (comparable to the 8/4 linen shown).

please note: this .pdf does not explain how to read a weaving draft, how to interpret the draft onto the loom, or the nuances of the overshot structure.

Click here to purchase weaving drafts from my shop Drafts are used to describe how to set up and weave a pattern. A weaving draft contains a tie-up (how to connect the shafts/ha...

The first thing I wove over 50 years ago was a fingertip towel with an overshot border. That was the moment I not only fell in love with weaving . . . but, with overshot too. There’s so much patterning possible on four shafts. I can cover an entire fabric with an overshot pattern or weave it as a border.

Fortunately for the handweaving community, Josephine Estes’ publication “Original Miniature Patterns for Hand Weaving” is available for viewing and download. There is a total of 48 overshot patterns. They have names like Lover’s Knot, Queen’s Delight, Star of Bethlehem, and more. (Although, I have to admit the pattern named ‘Foursome’ makes me giggle.)

Overshot weaving is an American artform of the Appalachian region of the United States. Overshot’s geometry may be familiar because of its ubiquity in coverlet weaving in that area in the 18th century. Its origins go even further back, its motifs appearing in northern Europe, the Phillipines and ancient Persia.

Overshot is a weave structure, woven on four harness looms. It is typically composed of a plain colored, cotton or linen warp (the threads held under tension on the loom) and a colorful, woolen weft (the floating yarn, wound onto a bobbin and passed through alternating warp threads). The warp threads are tied onto the loom in a sequence that allows for floating, woolen wefts to create the stunning, optical effects that lend overshot its distinctive patterning.

It is this subject, the embeddedness and codification of historical circumstances in cloth, that I chose to analyze in my work for the Portland Biennial in 2019, curated by Ashley Stull Meyers, Yaelle S. Amir, Elsheba Johnson at Disjectin Portland, Oregon. For the exhibition, I presented a historical weaving attributed to the collection of Peter Hardeman Burnett, noted author of the racist Oregon exclusionary laws, which, among other provisions, prevented Black Americans and other people of color from owning property in the state of Oregon from 1844 on into the modern era. That textile, woven in a popular colonial American style known as “Overshot,” is a recognizable aesthetic of American domestic idealism, one that can be traced back to the original colonies and Northern European ancestry.

My work unpacked this densely coded textile, rearranging its component parts to create a commentary on this racist history, presented as technical “weave drafts,” the codified instructions widely understood by weavers as instructions on how to recreate a particular woven design. The work is reflective, but aims to show how such histories are codified and embedded into our present material and visual languages.