8 shaft overshot in stock

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!

Designed for lightness and portability, our Norah table looms are complete weaver’s tools. They have graded length shaft control keys so fingers can easily identify which keys to lift or return. Warp control pawls and ratchets are outside where the weaver can easily reach them. Changing sheds is an extraordinarily smooth action because cords run over 16 maple wood pulleys, never dragged over rods or around eyelets.

I hope to submit at least one piece to the “Living with Craft” exhibition which is held during the League of NH Craftsmen Annual Summer Fair. (See more about the Summer Fair here). I’ve been tinkering with several different self-drafted overshot designs and finally settled on one:

After correcting a couple of threading errors and having words with a broken floating selvedge thread, I started to weave the overshot pattern. I’m using ivory 10/2 mercerized cotton in the warp and tabby weft and 5/2 mercerized cotton in mineral blue, single thickness, for the pattern weft. I typically use a thicker cotton for pattern wefts in overshot, but I really was going for a finer, lighter cloth here. I experimented with the 3/2 cotton during sampling and I found that the thicker yarn tended to yield a less defined design. Here is a photo of the first five inches or so:

This photo doesn’t do the best job of capturing the mineral blue color very well. If the good people of New Hampshire are provided with a day that affords more light, I will reattempt the pictures. This project will be in the works for some time so hopefully there will be a break in the clouds so that I can get a decent photo. As with all overshot cloth, the weaving is slow-going but the results are usually worth the effort.

The term overshot recalls coverlets woven on Early American barn frame looms dating back to the 1700’s. It is believed Europeans brought the weave structure to North America and fortunately weaving materials such as wool and cotton were readily available.

Susan invites you to spend two insightful days exploring one of her favorite weave structures. Her workshop creates multiple overshot samples serving as a ‘snapshot’ of overshot treadling sequences. Her goal is for each participant to enjoy learning the process of weaving “per block order” and understanding the benefits of doing so. This teaching method provides the groundwork for wider (on the loom) weaving projects once concepts are mastered.

Utilizing apre-wound8/2 cotton warp and tabby weft along with Borgs Fårö 6/1 for pattern weft, looms will be dressed prior to the workshop with an 8 1/2″ wide warp. Overshot treadlings such as Star and Rose will be explored in addition to Echo, On-Opposites, Petit Point, Lace Weave, Spetsväv, and Honeycomb.

As a bonus, at the end of the workshop, students will receive a 4-Shaft Overshot Pillows Draft which could include up to ten pillow tops. Sampling first, as we will do in the workshop, will enable you to enjoy your new-found knowledge for such a project.

The fee covers a 3-yardpre-woundBockens Egyptian 8/2 cotton warp for the class sampler. It will also include 8/2 cotton for the ground weft, Bockens 8/1 Linen in natural for Spetsväv and Borgs 6/2 Tuna Wool in white for Honeycomb treadlings.

(Students can provide their own 8/2 for warp and ground weft but they will also need to supply the extra weft material in 8/1 Linen and 6/2 white Tuna wool.)

4-Shaft Floor or table loom with 10-dent Imperial or 45/10 Metric reed; a minimum weaving width of 10”, in good working orderWooden Temple for 8-1/2” weaving width (a binder-clip temple is acceptable but not recommended.)

Weave Valley Yarns Summer Elegance Runner designed by Anita Thompson for summer, or any season. The 8-shaft overshot design, with its beautiful borders, is rich with color and pattern. Another nice touch is the backing, woven on the same warp, that gives a polished finish.Equipment: 8 shaft loom, 18-inch minimum width, 2 shuttles, 4 bobbins, temple, sewing machine, matching green sewing threadWarp Yarn: Valley Yarns 10/2 Cotton (100% Mercerized Cotton; 4200 yds/lb): #5604 Willow Green 1068 yds, #2574 Heather 194 yds, #7198 Burnt Sienna 476 ydsWeft Yarn:Valley Yarns 10/2 Cotton: #5604 Willow Green 1,277 yds, # 2574 Heather 27 yds, # 7198 Burnt Sienna 66 yds; Valley Yarns 5/2 Cotton (100% Mercerized Cotton, 2100 yds/lb): #1089 Alabaster 675 ydsWarp Length: 4 yds of 431 ends (consider putting on an additional ⅓ yd for sampling)Sett: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12–dent reed); Weft: 46 ppi (tabby and pattern together)

As weavers it’s not uncommon to come across weaving drafts that are decades or even centuries old. In her article for the November/December 2017 issue of Handwoven, Madelyn van der Hoogt teaches you how to decipher old overshot drafts. Check out the issue to discover more vintage drafts and projects inspired by famous weavers. ~Christina

Overshot is a miracle of design potential on only four shafts. Somewhere, sometime long ago, a weaver looked at 2/2 twill and said: What if I add a tabby weft and repeat each two-thread pair for longer floats? Incredible patterns evolved, shared by colonial weavers with each other on small pieces of precious paper. Luckily, many of these drafts were saved and have become part of our weaving literature. In some of the older sources, the drafting format looks very confusing. Here is a guide to using them.

In the days when paper was hard to come by and writing was done by dipping a quill in ink, drafting formats for weaving were as abbreviated as possible. Overshot patterns are so elaborate that they can’t be communicated by words or short repeats the way simple twills can (point, rosepath, straight, broken, etc.). Complete drafts are necessary. Threading repeats are often long—some with as many as 400 threads. A number of shorthand methods thereby evolved that are similar to our use of profile drafts for other block weaves. But the way overshot works doesn’t allow a strict substitution of threading units for blocks on a profile threading draft.

Overshot drafting formats: Figure 1 is from Davison’s A Handweaver’s Source Book, Figure 2 is from Weaver Rose, and Figure 3 is from Wilson and Kennedy’s Of Coverlets.

Figures 1–3 show the most common early drafting methods. (Compare their length with the thread-by-thread version in Figure 5.) In shorthand drafts, each overshot block contains an even number of threads, four per block in these. (Block labels in red are added to Figures 1, 2, and 3 for clarity.) In Figure 1, from Marguerite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Source Book, the numbers tell how many times to thread each block; the rows tell which block to thread (A = 1-2, B = 3-2, C = 3-4, and D = 1-4). Note how the blocks always start on an odd shaft to preserve the even/odd sequence across the warp. The first column of numbers on the right (2/2) means to thread Block A (shafts 1-2) two times, then thread Block B (shafts 3-2) two times, etc.

In Figure 2, the method used by Weaver Rose, the lines represent the shafts. The numbers represent the order in which to thread the shafts. Reading from the right: Thread shaft 1, 2, 1, 2 for Block A. Then, moving to Block B, thread 3, 2, 3, 2, etc. In Figure 3, from Of Coverlets, the pair of shafts for each block is given with the number of times to thread it. Reading from the right: Thread 1-2, 2x; 3-2, 2x; 3-4, 2x, 1-4, 2x, etc. Figure 4 shows the actual thread-by thread draft for Figures 1–3. It also shows the way this threading would appear in Keep Me Warm One Night. In the drafts in this book, each block is threaded with an even number of threads and circled.

However, in overshot, blocks share shafts. That is, Block A (on shafts 1-2) shares shaft 2 with Block B and shaft 1 with Block D. Block B shares shaft 2 with Block A and shaft 3 with Block C, etc. When, for example, Block B is woven, a pattern-weft float covers the four threads that have been threaded for Block B and the thread on shaft 2 in Block A and the thread on shaft 3 in Block C. The circled blocks in Figure 5 show the warp threads that will actually produce pattern in each block using the drafts in Figures 1–4. Notice that Block B on the right will show a weft float over six threads, but on the left over only four. The same imbalance occurs with Block C; see also the drawdown in Figure 8. In the drafts derived from these shorthand drafts, float lengths over blocks in symmetrical positions always differ from each other by two warp threads.

Unbalanced drafts can be balanced by removing (or adding) pairs of shafts from the circled blocks; see Figures 6–10. In fact, to reduce or enlarge any draft, first circle the blocks so that they overlap to include their shared threads as in Figure 5. Then add or subtract pairs of threads. Notice that Block D has an odd number of threads, which is true of all “turning” blocks. Turning blocks are blocks where threading direction changes (any shift from the ABCD direction to the DCBA direction or vice versa).

The overshot drafts in Marguerite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book and in Mary Meigs Atwater’s The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving have all been balanced; see their drafting formats in Figures 11 and 12.

Figure 8: Blocks woven as drawn in (“star fashion”) for the unbalanced draft in Figures 1–5. Figure 9: Blocks woven as drawn in (“star fashion”) for the balanced draft in Figure 7. Figure 10: Blocks woven “rose fashion” for the balanced draft in Figures 7–9. Figure 11: Balanced draft from Davison. Figure 12: Balanced draft from Atwater.

This book is a great pattern book compiled from patterns sent in by the Friends of Handwoven. Variations on twills, complex overshot, crackle, lace and huck, double weave and shadow weave all abound in this satisfying collection of complete weaving drafts in the style of the classic 4-harness collection of Marguerite Davison. For those moments to study something new are diversified plain weaves, extended twills, unit weaves, piquet multiple tabby, and more.

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.