free overshot weaving patterns made in china

Do you love to weave? Here is a draft for an overshot scarf made from 10/2 Xie (rayon from bamboo) and self-striping sock yarn. You"ll need a 4-harness loom, a 12-dent reed, 2 shuttles and the willingness to have a little fun!

Overshot is a classic weaving style brought to this country by the early European settlers. You"ll find the classic blue and white overshot coverlets in museums, antique stores and old homes. Today, overshot is being re-imagined in all kinds of ways. It"s still a beautiful, fun style to weave.

I"d like to make an overshot scarf using the draft, Johann Schleelein"s 123, in "A Handweaver"s Pattern Book," by Marguerite Porter Davison. I"m re-drafting this pattern to have...

If you have taken a class with me or Courtney, or met us at an event and asked “how did you two get started with Kelbourne?” inevitably, you will hear about our backgrounds in weaving. Despite longing for a BFA or MFA, when looking into college and then grad school, I went with an ever-so-slightly more practical route and obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees in Textiles that focused heavily on weave structure and production.

Since Kelbourne was founded right in the middle of my masters work, I never had the opportunity to pursue weaving as the focus of my career. After moving into a home with room for a dedicated studio 2 years ago, I finally had the space to set up my floor loom (and the freedom to weave something not related to my grad work), and was delighted – and a bit overwhelmed – at the possibility.

A large focus of my graduate work was on designing patterns for the jacquard loom and coming up with new structures on the 24 harness compu-dobby. Both required heavy sampling and development (think swatching over…and over…and over).

When returning to weaving for fun, I looked to one of my favorite structures, Overshot, to create this scarf. Overshot is deceptively simple, and the end result is quite beautiful. The structure looks incredibly complicated, but the effort is in the threading. Unlike a straight draw, where the ends of a warp are threaded 1-2-3-4, etc, an overshot threading is unique to the pattern and directly related to the treadling of the warp ends. The large blocks of color created by floats of the patterning weft are stabilized by a tabby weft, a much thinner warp end that is woven in a plain weave after every patterning weft pick. To throw in a knitting analogy, while applied differently, the tabby weft can be thought of similarly as tacking long floats in colorwork.

We featured this scarf in an ad in a recent issue of Handwoven in an effort to show off The Fibre Co. Meadow and The Fibre Co. Road to China Lace as excellent weaving yarns. After receiving requests to make the pattern available, I was finally thoroughly convinced to do so by a lovely woman, Elinor, who lives in the same area of New York state where I went to undergrad.

“Fish in the Pond” Overshot from The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving by Mary Meigs Atwater, as published in A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler.

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.

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)

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.