8 shaft overshot made in china

Taking our inspiration from our favorite artists (Anni Albers, Ansel Adams, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet, and Pierre-August Renoir) we designed this fun kit for 4 generous, towels with 3 colors of 10/2 Tubular Spectrum™yarn.  And you can choose your favorite colorway.Woven in 2 blocks to create a visually complex towel that is fun and easy to weave.Finished towels are approximately 18″ x 28″.  Kit includes instructions for both 4 and 8-shaft looms.

Elsa Krogh, Danish weaver, spinner and author, has brought together her favorite weaving patterns using four, six and eight shafts. Elsa has woven beautiful and exciting shawls, scarves, cushions, towels, table runners, placemats and fabric material, She uses a variety of techniques from twill to summer and winter and modern backed weaves and there are projects for all levels of weaving experience. Many of the patterns are sourced from archival material from local museums. Elsa brings a wonderful sense of continuity to her craft as well as elegant Scandinavian style.

We have assembled the yarns to make Cynthia Newman’s Sword Fern & Horsetail Runner as shown in the March/April 2020 edition of Handwoven Magazine from Long Thread Media.  You will find the instructions on page 38. If you do not have a current subscription, you can purchase one here: Handwoven Magazine

We have assembled the yarns to make Mary Berent’s Advancing Blues Shawl as shown in Handwoven’s Lookbook:  Loom Theory:  8-shaft Shawl Collection 2019 from Long Thread Media.  We have collected the Zephyr yarns you will need to make the shawl…you will need to purchase the instructions from Long Thread Media. Click Here for the instructions:  Loom Theory: 8-shaft Shawl Collection 2019 from Long Thread Media.The instructions as written make 1 shawl.  We have assembled the yarn for either 1 or 2 shawls.

Not only do you get to see how the 20 Tubular Spectrum™ colors interact with each other in a color gamp, but you also get to see how very different the colors look with a multitude of woven structures.  You warp your loom once, and then by changing the treadling, you can have 8 radically different, yet related napkins.

Weave four towels that are as American as apple pie on your 8-shaft loom!   The overshot pattern is a modified “Star of Bethlehem”.  We have included yarn and instructions to make four DYNAMITE towels using our 10/2 and 5/2 Tubular Spectrum™ mercerized cotton yarns.  The finished sizes of the towels are approximately 16” x 29”.

Weave four beautiful heart towels on your 8-shaft loom.  The advancing twill pattern provides the heart borders, and then the body of the towel is woven with a fancy twill that creates a “sweet” texture.  We have included yarn and instructions to make two pink towels and two red towels using our 10/2 Tubular Spectrum™ yarns.  The finished sizes of the towels are approximately 16” x 24”.

Who wouldn’t want to reach for a fluffy, handwoven bath towel when you step out of the shower or bath?  These towels make great gifts, sure to impress even the most discerning of newlyweds! And, for the best part…they weave up quickly.   The towels come in either brown or green and are made from our own American Maid 100% Naturally Colored Cotton Yarn.   The kit makes 2 thick and thirsty bath towels (finished size approximately 31” x 64”). Woven with soft 8/2 unmercerized cotton yarn, and a 4 or 8-shaft waffle weave structure, these towels have a delicious softness.  Treat yourself or your loved ones to some new towels!

It is truly luxurious to wrap up in a fluffy, handwoven bath towel when you step out of the shower or bath.  These towels make great gifts, sure to impress even the most discerning of newlyweds! The towels come with soft natural white for the body of the towel, and you choose your favorite accent color from 10 Maurice Brassard colors to customize these towels!  And, for the best part…they weave up quickly.   The kit makes 2 thick and thirsty bath towels (finished size approximately 31” x 64”). Woven with soft 8/2 unmercerized cotton yarn, and a 4 or 8-shaft waffle weave structure, these towels have a delicious softness.  Treat yourself or your loved ones to some new towels!

This towel kit from DJE Handwovens features American Maid (TM) naturally colored cotton yarn (natural white yarn for the warp with either dark green or dark brown for the weft).   The resulting towels are silky soft and absorbent that are a pleasure to use! And the colors deepen with washing!  The kit contains enough yarn to weave two towels and has instructions to weave them on an 8 shaft loom.

There is nothing like stepping out of a relaxing bath or a warm shower and wrapping yourself up in a soft, thick towel.  The sustainably grown, American Maid™ white cotton in this kit creates a bath towel that is thick and thirsty. Talk about warm fuzzies!  This kit contains enough yarn to weave 4 bath towels (approximately 48”x28”), or 3 generous bath sheets (approximately 62”x28”).

Tied overshot, often called stars and diamonds weave, evokes images of pretty weaving patterns.  Having read several articles about it, I learned that tied overshot is well known for being a traditional Colonial coverlet weave used in Pennsylvania in the nineteenth century.  It looks like overshot, but is more closely related to summer and winter.

I read Clotilde Barrett’s article, “Coverlet Weaves Using Two Ties” (Weaver’s Journal, April 1979 issue #12, downloadable from handweaving.net).  This excellent article has photos of various samples with drafts and notes, and I was particularly interested in the photo of the sample in Plate 6.  The article mentions Dorothy K. and Harold B. Burnham’s notable book, Keep Me Warm One Night, that refers to the weave of this sample as “stars and diamonds.”  To better understand how to design such a weave, I closely studied the chapter on tied overshot in Madelyn van der Hoogt’s book, The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers, one of my favorite books on drafting.  I then designed and wove a bunch of samples and three tied overshot table runners.  In this post I’ll be sharing, among other things, photos, drafts, and notes about these runners starting with this blue runner:

To design the 12-shaft draft shown above, I adapted the tie-up from the draft in Figure 7 in Clotilde’s article, and the threading and treadling from the chapter in Madelyn’s book on tied overshot, Figure 11b:  “Uneven 2-tie overshot: 5 thread half-unit.”  In other variations the size of these units can vary.  I also want to mention that you can design new patterns using the same threading and treadling by simply making changes in the tie-up.  For example, in the partial draft above you can make changes to the tie-up within the area marked by the yellow rectangle to design new patterns.  That’s what I did and wove the other two runners on the same warp.  There are no stars in the red one and the mauve one is mostly just diamonds:

Some of the articles I read refer to John Landes’ draft No. 76 (14 shafts) as “stars and diamonds.”  I was curious about it and found it in A Book of Patterns for Hand-Weaving; Designs from the John Landes Drawings in the Pennsylvania Museum; drafts and notes by Mary Meigs Atwater.  It’s downloadable from handweaving.net, and you can find it there if you search in “Documents” and then “Key Words” and enter “John Landes.”  It doesn’t seem to come up when you search by “Author.”  I plugged the info from the draft into my weaving software and it looks like this:

I also found online a PDF version of Tom Knisely’s March/April 2006 article in Handwoven magazine, “Stars and Diamonds – for a show towel on fourteen shafts.”  I think the John Landes draft was used for the towel.  This is a nice article with detailed drafts and step-by-step instructions.  For more on tied overshot and related weaves there are many excellent articles in Weaver’s magazine issue #19 (4th quarter 1992), the theme is friendship coverlets.

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 s...

Pot holder, hot pads, trivets—whichever you prefer, these tools are all indispensable when making Thanksgiving dinner. They keep your hands protected as you pull trays from the oven and keep your table safe from extra hot casserole dishes. Weaving your own means you can make them to fit your hands, insulate them as much as you want (you can buy heat-proof oven mitt liner at sewing and craft stores), and, of course, design them to match your décor. So as you place a steaming platter on the table your guests will ooh and aah as much over the hot pads as the food. Try these 4-shaft overshot pot holders by Jean Korus. The classic overshot weaving designs are perfect for Thanksgiving.

Letting somebody else do the cooking this year? What better way to say thank you than bringing them a bottle of wine or lovely sparkling water in a thoughtful handwoven bag such as the 6-shaft Hail to the Hostess bags by Susan E. Horton. They’re absolutely beautiful and thoroughly useful even after the initial bottle has been consumed. They’re also a good project for learning how to weave a bag because they’re so simple to sew (you can see the instructions here)—you might end up finding reasons to give away bottles just so you can make more!

Some people claim the centerpiece of any Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey. I think it’s the handwoven table runner. You can design your own to match your china, to coordinate perfectly with the roasted butternut squash and Brussels sprouts, or to stand out and steal the show from everything else. If you need some inspiration I’m a big fan of the Autumn Fire Runner. It’s beautiful 8-shaft runner pattern that’s easy to wash and has just enough shimmer and shine to impress your guests.

Overshot is perhaps the most iconic weaving technique--think antique coverlets and fancy table runners--yet many weavers are intimidated by its complex-looking structure. But it doesn"t have to be difficult! In this book, Susan Kesler-Simpson makes overshot approachable by breaking it down piece by piece so that the weaver understands how it works, and then she puts it all back together so that weavers will have the confidence to make their own overshot patterns or to try any of the 38 overshot projects she has designed for the book.

"Susan’s explanations are to the point and easy to understand. When you read through the chapters, it’s as if Susan is sitting there with you, telling you in a friendly voice how to weave overshot step by step."--excerpt from the Foreword by Tom Knisely

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.

“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.