8 shaft overshot quotation

Recently there was a post shared in the Warped weavers group on the thread called “What weaving thing have you been doing” post #24827. Website pic is here: http://summer.putneyschool.org/adultstudio/fiber-arts

It is a very colorful and beautiful overshot sampler done with red, yellow, and blue in the warp and the tabby wefts are the same colors, but the pattern weft is white.

The requirement was to take a "traditional" overshot threading, weave a repeat of that, then weave it in "rose" fashion, then in "monk"s belt" fashion. (There were other options as well, but this is what fit on the scanner flat bed. Besides, it"s the "star" and "rose" fashions I want to talk about here.)

Not every overshot draft can be effectively converted to "rose". If you look at the above photo, the top design has very strong diagonal lines running through the entire motif. The middle sample, has very strong circles in the design - the "rose".

An overshot threading can be woven in other weave structures. If the design has small units/blocks, it can be woven in a 2:2 twill, lacey, honeycomb along with others.

Overshot is characterized by areas of floats (generally considered the design/motif), half-tones and plain weave. Larger sized designs may have very long pattern floats, so sometimes the pattern float is tied down so that there is no plain weave area as such, but only the floats and half-tones.

When going to overshot on eight shafts, it is possible to have no half-tones at all, or weave the overshot motif in double weave so that you don"t have long floats, but still retain the motif. Much like I have been taking overshot motifs and converting them to twill blocks (because I have the 16 shafts needed to do that.)

The warp on the loom right now is the Canadian Snowflake twill (derived from the 8 shaft Swedish Snowflake into a four shaft twill) which I converted into twill blocks.

One of my favorite parts of working on my Ancient Rose Scarf for the March/April 2019 issue of Handwoven was taking the time to research overshot and how it fits into the history of American weaving. As a former historian, I enjoyed diving into old classics by Lou Tate, Eliza Calvert Hall, and Mary Meigs Atwater, as well as one of my new favorite books, _Ozark Coverlets, by Marty Benson and Laura Lyon Redford Here’s what I wrote in the issue about my design:_

“The Earliest weaving appears to have been limited to the capacity of the simple four-harness loom. Several weaves are possible on this loom, but the one that admits of the widest variations is the so-called ‘four harness overshot weave,’—and this is the foremost of the colonial weaves.” So wrote Mary Meigs Atwater in The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving when speaking of the American coverlet and the draft s most loved by those early weavers.

Overshot, in my mind, is the most North American of yarn structures. Yes, I know that overshot is woven beyond the borders of North America, but American and Canadian weavers of old took this structure and ran with it. The coverlets woven by weavers north and south provided those individuals with a creative outlet. Coverlets needed to be functional and, ideally, look nice. With (usually) just four shaft s at their disposal, weavers gravitated toward overshot with its stars, roses, and other eye-catching patterns. Using drafts brought to North America from Scotland and Scandinavia, these early weavers devised nearly endless variations and drafts, giving them delightful names and ultimately making them their own.

When I first began designing my overshot scarf, I used the yarn color for inspiration and searched for a draft reminiscent of poppies. I found just what I was looking for in the Ancient Rose pattern in A Handweaver’s Pattern Book. When I look at the pattern, I see poppies; when Marguerite Porter Davison and other weavers looked at it, they saw roses. I found out later that the circular patterns—what looked so much to me like flowers—are also known as chariot wheels.

Independent Block Overshot on 8 shafts is a structure that allows the weaver to produce cloth with beautiful, clear patterns. Where the usual traditional 4-shaft overshot has halftones that soften the blocks of pattern, this structure allows control of the block and halftone placement. Manipulating the blocks and halftones in the tie-up results in clean lines and vast amounts of design possibilities within a single threading.

We will explore the use of profile drafts, and the process involved in converting 4-shaft designs into 8-shaft overshot drafts. You’ll learn theory, design, color, and proportion—all that’s required to develop your own overshot project. The first class will be in a lecture format. You will be given a dressed warp with instructions to dress your own loom at home. In class 2 & 3 you’ll bring your loom, weave round-robin style, and leave with a set of overshot samples.

Anita has been weaving for over 18 years and earned her Master Weavers Certificate from Hill Institute in 2009. Her pieces have won many awards and have been featured in Handwoven magazine. Anita enjoys exploring many different weave structures, but Independent Block Overshot is her favorite. She lives in Goshen, MA, and enjoys traveling, playing bridge and spending time with her daughter, Megan.

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.

And the book has some very neat tricks in it, most of which can be done on an 8-shaft loom. How to put a monk"s belt border on all four sides of a piece without losing your mind. How to float overshot motifs on a plain or twill background. The piece with motifs having different pattern weft colors in the same row by using one motif"s pattern weft as the other"s tabby was very cool. My personal favorite and the one that really excited me was the discussion of blended drafts. Basically it walks you through how to take any two drafts that have the same total thread count but different threadings, and combine them into a single new threading that will weave both. Any two 4-shaft overshot drafts can be combined on 8 shafts max, so I see a lot of potential for this. You can also combine different structures, say to put an overshot border on a textured towel.