miniature overshot patterns for hand weaving quotation

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. Bertha Hayes attended the first nine National Conferences of American Handweavers (1938-1946). She learned to weave by herself through the Shuttle-Craft home course and was a charter member of the Shuttle-Craft Guild, and authored articles on weaving.

About the authors: The Weavers" Guild of Rhode Island was founded in 1947 to promote understanding and the practice of handweaving. It offers monthly programs and workshops, and is an active member of the New England Weavers Seminar.

Jan Mostrom describes her ties to Scandinavian weaving techniques and to the Scandinavian Weavers Study Group: “I have been weaving since a January term class taught by Lila Nel...

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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.

Bertha Hayes attended the first nine National Conferences of American Handweavers (1938-1946). She learned to weave by herself through the Shuttle-Craft home course and was a charter member of the Shuttle-Craft Guild, and authored articles on weaving.

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.

Designs were focused on repeating geometric patterns that were created by using a supplementary weft that was typically a dyed woolen yarn over a cotton plain weave background. The designs expressed were often handed down through family members and shared within communities like a good recipe. And each weaver was able to develop their own voice by adjusting the color ways and the treadling arrangements. Predominately, the homestead weavers that gave life and variations to these feats of excellent craftsmanship were women. However, not every home could afford a loom, so the yarn that was spun would have been sent out to be woven by the professional weavers, who were mostly men.

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.

Advanced weavers with 8-, 12- or 16-harness looms will find a lot of useful information here. The purpose of this book is to present a number of weaves from which a wide range of designing is possible. Charts have been developed to assist in tying up, pegging or feeding the information to the computer so that precious time may be saved to apply to the designing aspect. Concepts are given in a terse but clear and to the point format eliminating the need for in-depth study. Once you understand the concepts you"ll understand many different multiple harness weave systems. After a short section explaining the Charts and Terminology used in the book, the author provides chapters that cover: Beiderwand, Crackle, Damask, Diaper Twill, Dimai, Double Two-Tie, Double Weave, Lace Weaves, Overshot, The Profile Draft, Summer & Winter, Tie-ups and Twills. There is a large bibliography for those who wish to do further study and a complete index at the end.

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.

Bertha Hayes attended the first nine National Conferences of American Handweavers (1938-1946). She learned to weave by herself through the Shuttle-Craft home course and was a charter member of the Shuttle-Craft Guild, and authored articles on weaving.

Whew!! Finally I feel like we are close! I could count the days, but I’m afraid to because I know I would have a panic attack. The big sale as you can see above is November 19 and 20. But I am going to have a nice booth at theTextile Arts Council Bazaar the week before on November 12. More info on that at the end of the post. Saturday, November 12, 10 AM — 4 PM, St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1111 Gough St. (at Geary), San Francisco.

Before that I had an appraiser of Asian Art to help me understand what I have accumulated in my textile collection. Now, when I look at a treasured piece, I remember all about how I bought it and in what country. Of course Japan (many trips) but also India (3), China (3), Uzbekestan, Philippines, Mororrco, and Bhutan.

Besides downsizing my collection (no heirs), I want to part with my work. I’ve had a couple small shows, but haven’t sold the majority of my work. I wonder if people ever sell much at shows! I have lots of weavings but also a lot of dye work that I did during the pandemic.

My tech guy, handsome Bob, has designed so much, as well as offered good advice along the way. We made hang tags, 2 flyers so far, and a large banner. The photo above is of the hang tag. At the sale he will show images of a large obi I have that is made of precious linden bark with sumi ink drawing. It is one of my most precious pieces. It hangs in my apartment and measures about 14″ by 24′.

My friend, Cathy arranged a trip for us to go to Amami Island in Japan to see a very special textile being woven. Kimonos would be woven of the cloth and the textiles are known as Oshima Textiles. We went to a special Oshima shop in Tokyo once and all the kimonos were very unattractive to our eye. However the mud dye and the weaving is extraordinary. We went to Amami Island and saw them weaving what I’d heard about: TWICE WOVEN cloth. That means, at first the threads would be woven for the RESIST when the threads were dyed. AFTER THAT the threads would be put back on a loom and WOVEN again.

I brought home quite a few pieces of beautiful cloth; each one is amazing! And to imagine and realize that each and every thread had been woven twice! In future posts I can show diagrams and pictures and you can see my pieces in my collection for the sale at my new website in the Oshima section: PeggyOsterkampCollection.

One of the coolest things about weaving is that it is generally understood to have emerged at similar times in many different geographical locations around the world. People weave in different ways, for different purposes, and in different conditions. Learning from other weavers has been one of the most valuable experiences to my weaving practice. Since I expect most of us won"t be traveling much in the near future, I figured it was a good time to share some of my most meaningful travel experiences.

I"ve had the opportunity to go to to Mexico, India, Morocco, Europe, and many places in the US and Canada to learn from weaving experts. I’m going to share what I’ve learned along the way.

I found one of the best ways to extend a visit and learn more was to jump in as an assistant. In Morocco, there was a group of weavers that were working on fly shuttle looms at an alarming pace. I didn’t feel right interupting them to ask questions, but I wanted to watch and see how they did things. In terrible french I offered to help wind pirns (their version of bobbins) using their huge (but amazingly efficient) bike wheel mock up. Turns out I wind a pretty decent pirn and they let me stay and try out their looms too. Unfortunately I don’t throw a great fly shuttle so I was kept on the pirns!

At first I was hesitant to take up the time of busy weavers. I felt like just another tourist distracting them from their work. Turns out, most of the weavers were really excited to meet a Canadian weaver! After a few interactions, I realized that it wasn"t all take, I had something to GIVE too. It can be tricky trying to communicate with a language barrier, but it isn"t impossible. In many situations in Morocco, I had no Arabic, and most of the weavers had little-no English, so we were both trying to communicate in French which was not great for either of us. The good thing about weaving is that so much of it can be communicated without any language at all. In the above image, I am learning a special weaving knot from Youseph that he learned as a child. After he taught me, I shared with him how I tie on the loom with a surgeons knot. I also helped him to lower his bench so it was more ergonomic. Even though Youseph is a lifelong weaver who drills holes in cards himself to make the patterns on his handmade Jacquard-like loom, I still had a little something to contribute.

Many weavers in North America are fortunate enough to have access to the weaving tools that they need. This isn"t always the case in many of the places I visited. Most of the looms I saw in India, and all of the looms I saw in Morocco were handmade, often by the weaver themselves. Popular scrap materials include toothpicks, bike parts, string, and sticks of all kinds.

I remember once for a project making about 30 string heddles because I had not planned well. I got very grumpy. My perspective is different now for sure. Have you ever been in a weaving situation where necessity was the mother of invention?

I was lucky enough to have a translator in the small town of Sefrou, where I had the opportunity to speak with Mustapha (see above image). He was excited to talk to another weaver and we shared weaving knowledge and stories. He told me that in Arabic, the warping mill is called the “heart,” because without a good warp, the weaving has no life. I think about that now when I use my mill. The translator told me that Mustapha was difficult to translate because he speaks in so many metaphors. Weaving is full of metaphors! How could he not?

Have you seen weaving at all in your travels? If money/time/coronavirus were no object, where would you go? Angela and I would love to hear about your weaving-travel adventures!

After weaving the project samples for my book, I had a bit of an 8/4 cotton warp remaining on the loom. I perused my stack of Handwoven magazines and saved project files for some inspiration and decided upon weaving a little overshot on this remnant.

For the Non-Weavers - Overshot is a weaving technique. If you are familiar with Colonial coverlets, they were traditionally woven in overshot patterns. Here is a link with great photos Woven American Coverlets.

Unlike Krokbragd, a wealth of information exists on how to weave overshot. Just about any weaving book will contain at least a chapter on the topic, as well as there are videos, articles and countless published drafts.

Back to my little overshot project, I found my inspiration in the November/December 2017 issue of Handwovenin an article by Inga Marie Carmel entitled ‘Exploring Overshot’. The author chose a draft called Blossom, a Bertha Gray Hayes miniature overshot pattern.

Bertha Gray Hayes was an early 20th century weaver known for her miniature overshot and name draft designs. Miniature overshot pares down an established overshot pattern to its bare minimum while still maintaining the integrity of the pattern’s character. For more on the subject, check out Weaving Designs By Bertha Gray Hayes: Miniature Overshot Patterns by Norma Smayda, Gretchen White, Jody Brown, and Katharine Schelleng.

In Ms. Carmel’s sampler, she explored six different treadlings of the Blossom pattern. Since I had a much smaller warp, I had to do a bit of reworking in Weaveit (the weaving software program I use). I was only able to weave three of the six variations; the star and rose which are two of the basic overshot treadlings, and a variation referred to as “in the Scandinavian manner”.

Typical of overshot samplers and coverlets, the motifs are framed by a complementary border. If you compare my left selvedge with the right, you will notice that I did not quite work out the correct border. Although I’m not keen to sample, this certainly is a good example where sampling would be beneficial before committing to weaving the edited draft on a much larger project.

An interesting feature of overshot is that the reverse side is generally also equally attractive. I actually chose this reverse side as the “front” of my project.

As I said at the beginning of the post, the warp is 8/4 cotton, as is the tabby weft. The pattern weft is Borg’s 6/2 Tuna wool in the color Denim. I had to add a couple of ends to my warp for a total of 107 ends at 15 EPI (sleyed 2-1 in 10-dent reed). I used my typical method of throwing a few picks of fusible thread (see this post) as I planned to do a hemmed finish. In the end, I hemmed just one end and left the other to fringe. I wet finished the little piece of fabric and when it was almost dry, gave it a hard press.

To make my mini pouch, I folded the fabric and whipstitched the sides (no turned seam). I didn’t like the fringe, so I trimmed close to the fused thread and the cotton fuzzed into a cute edge. The finished size is 6 1/4” x 4 1/2” (folded); the perfect size for my reading glasses or phone. See that little button . . .