8 shaft overshot manufacturer

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 project was really popular when I posted it on Instagram, so I thought I would share it here also. It is a simple overshot pattern - with a twist. Also a great way to show off some special yarn. The yarn I used for my pattern was a skein of hand spun camel/silk blend. I wove the fabric on my Jack loom but you could also use your four or eight shaft loom.

Overshot is a weave structure where the weft threads jump over several warp threads at once, a supplementary weft creating patterns over a plain weave base. Overshot gained popularity in the turn of the 19th century (although its origins are a few hundred years earlier than that!). Coverlets (bed covers) were woven in Overshot with a cotton (or linen) plain weave base and a wool supplementary weft for the pattern. The plain weave base gave structure and durability and the woollen pattern thread gave warmth and colour/design. Designs were basic geometric designs that were handed down in families and as it was woven on a four shaft loom the Overshot patterns were accessible to many. In theory if you removed all the pattern threads form your Overshot you would have a structurally sound piece of plain weave fabric.

I was first drawn to Overshot many years ago when I saw what looked to me like "fragments" of Overshot in Sharon Aldermans "Mastering Weave Structures".

I wanted to use my handspun - but I only had a 100gms skein, I wanted to maximise the amount of fabric I could get using the 100gms. I thought about all the drafts I could use that would show off the weft and settled on overshot because this showcases the pattern yarn very nicely. I decided to weave it “fragmented” so I could make my handspun yarn go further. I chose a honeysuckle draft.

When doing the treadle tie-up I used 3 and 8 for my plain weave and started weaving from the left, treadle 3 - so you always know which treadle you are up to - shuttle on the left - treadle 3, shuttle on the right treadle 8. I then tied up the pattern on treadles 4,5,6 and 7. You can work in that order by repeating the sequence or you can mix it up and go from 4 to 7 and back to 4 again etc. You will easily see what the pattern is doing.

As a young child visiting my great aunt in the nursing home, I would love to sneak to the lower floor and watch as residents wove blankets on large floor looms. I dreamt of weaving my own blanket. When I married and moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, over 30 years ago, I walked by a shop selling Schacht looms and offering classes. I went home with a table loom that day—a far cry from those big looms in the nursing home, but just as exciting. Money was tight, so I got an old spinning wheel and ordered raw fleeces to make my own yarn. When we moved to a small colony farm in Palmer, Alaska, in 1989, I knew right away I would get the perfect sheep to grow the best wool for my projects. Many more looms and sheep followed. Superfine merino sheep originally from Morehouse Farm in New York entered the picture in 1990 and our flock continued to grow and produce amazing wool. I was unable to keep up with the spinning and started sending our wool to Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill, who do a great job spinning yarn. I use this yarn to make woolen goods for purchase, including blankets, shawls, scarves, and felted yardage.

We purchased the 60″ 8-shaft Cranbrook with 12 treadles, the sliding threading bench, the sectional warping beam, tension box, and spool rack. The instructions were amazing, and it was easy to set up. The tension box was essential during the beaming process. We only had one Schacht spool rack which only controlled 20 of our 40 cotton bobbins. We improvised “racks” for the remaining 20 bobbins, which we do not recommend. The threading bench is another accessory that helped us to complete the warping of this large project (getting a friend to sit there is also recommended). With the ease of the tension box, it made sense to warp a 30-yard warp. In this way, the warped loom would be available for commissions and studio hours for those weavers who wish to weave their own coverlet.

One thing I did not realize when I bought the Cranbrook was that the treadles can lock into place to keep the shed open. This is especially helpful when weaving a wide project, as you don’t need to keep your foot on the treadle when you “catch” the shuttle at the other side. (If I had known this, I would have bought the 72″). I tied my tabby threads to treadles 3 and 4, skipped two treadles, and tied my pattern threads to treadles 7, 8, 9, and 10. It was easy to get in a great rhythm and “dance” through the pattern. Good music kept up my beat. The weighted hanging beater option made it relaxing and gave me a dense consistent beat with minimal effort.

Thread following Lee’s Surrender draft in A Handweaver’s Pattern Book, page 184. Repeat center block 30 times. Tie up according to draft. Note: the drafts in this book are written for a sinking shed loom. For a rising shed loom, tie up the blank boxes, not the boxes marked with X.

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.

Pattern is designed to use our Organic cottolin (Cotolin) to weave 4 placemats- finished size 14"X20", 4 napkins 14"X14" and a runner with a finished size 14"X38". Requires an 8 shaft loom, 24 epi, 15" wide. 1 tube each of our 4 Ruby Anniversary colors Vendor item: HYPattern

Related items:15 3/4" 8 shaft loom, 12 dent reed double sleyed, shuttles, 4 bobbins. Pattern gauge: 12 dpi Yarn weight: Lace Yardage needed:1 tube each of 4 colors. We used 2 reds 5096 & 5116, and 2 purples 8264 & 5153.

The Baby Wolf comes in your choice of 4 or 8 shafts, or you can choose our Four Now+Four Later model, which allows you to expand from four shafts to eight shafts at any time.

4 Now / 4 Later Models:  The Baby Wolf/Mighty Wolf 4 Now-4 Later models are shipped with the space to add an additional 4 shafts. Once you decide you"re ready to add those extra 4 shafts, this kit provides you with everything you need!

This 4 shaft jack-type floor loom with 36" weaving width is designed for the weaver with limited space who wants a fairly wide, solid loom. The Artisat is a quiet floor model loom equipped with an easy tie-up system. Loom weight has been reduced to a minimum, but it is sufficiently sturdy to do heavy work. It can be folded front and back to a depth of 14" (4 shaft loom) even if weaving is on the loom. The shed will always be good regardless of the kind of cloth you are making (Double Weave, Bronson, Leno, etc.). It is built with 6 treadles (4 shaft loom) and permits any combination of tie-ups. Equipped with a regular plain beam, a set of rake-like pieces may be added to convert it into a sectional warp beam. The rake-like pieces must be screwed directly onto the beam.

The 4 shaft model comes with regular treadles. For the 8 shaft model, you have the choice of either order the loom with regular treadles or with back hinge treadles. Back hinge treadles make treadling complex patterns easier.

The David Loom is a sinking shed loom but it is not a counterbalance loom.  Counterbalance looms work with 2 sets of rollers.  When you tie-up a treadle to any combination of shafts then you have an opposite movement of what has not been tied-up.

The David has shafts that are attached to cams and springs inside the castle. All the harnesses always live in the up position of the shed and then what you tie-up moves down through the midpoint to the bottom of the reed giving you a sinking shed action (which means only one part of the warp moves) but you have a counterbalance shed which gives you equal tension on both parts of the warp.   Louet is the only loom manufacturer to use this system….they invented it.  You have no sag in your warp ever and you get no rolling of the weft inside the shed which are both problems with traditional jack looms.  I hope that makes sense to you.

The overshot weaving project shown is woven on a 16″ Ashford Table Loom 8 shaft, The yarns used are Ashford 100% mercerised cotton in 10/2 and 5/2. (We don’t have this yarn currently listed on our site, but we’re able to order it in for you. Send us an email at: info@sweetgeorgiayarns.com!) The pattern is Overshot Sampler from the book Next Steps in Weaving by Pattie Graver

Overshot: The earliest coverlets were woven using an overshot weave. There is a ground cloth of plain weave linen or cotton with a supplementary pattern weft, usually of dyed wool, added to create a geometric pattern based on simple combinations of blocks. The weaver creates the pattern by raising and lowering the pattern weft with treadles to create vibrant, reversible geometric patterns. Overshot coverlets could be woven domestically by men or women on simple four-shaft looms, and the craft persists to this day.

Summer-and-Winter: This structure is a type of overshot with strict rules about supplementary pattern weft float distances. The weft yarns float over no more than two warp yarns. This creates a denser fabric with a tighter weave. Summer-and-Winter is so named because one side of the coverlet features more wool than the other, thus giving the coverlet a summer side and a winter side. This structure may be an American invention. Its origins are somewhat mysterious, but it seems to have evolved out of a British weaving tradition.

Multi-harness/Star and Diamond: This group of coverlets is characterized not by the structure but by the intricacy of patterning. Usually executed in overshot, Beiderwand, or geometric double cloth, these coverlets were made almost all made in Eastern Pennsylvania by professional weavers on looms with between twelve and twenty-six shafts.

America’s earliest coverlets were woven in New England, usually in overshot patterns and by women working collectively to produce textiles for their own homes and for sale locally. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s book, Age of Homespun examines this pre-Revolutionary economy in which women shared labor, raw materials, and textile equipment to supplement family incomes. As the nineteenth century approached and textile mills emerged first in New England, new groups of European immigrant weavers would arrive in New England before moving westward to cheaper available land and spread industrialization to America’s rural interior.

The coverlets from New York and New Jersey are among the earliest Figured and Fancy coverlets. NMAH possesses the earliest Figured and Fancy coverlet (dated 1817), made on Long Island by an unknown weaver. These coverlets are associated primarily with Scottish and Scots-Irish immigrant weavers who were recruited from Britain to provide a skilled workforce for America’s earliest woolen textile mills, and then established their own businesses. New York and New Jersey coverlets are primarily blue and white, double cloth and feature refined Neoclassical and Victorian motifs. Long Island and the Finger Lakes region of New York as well as Bergen County, New Jersey were major centers of coverlet production.

Southern coverlets almost always tended to be woven in overshot patterns. Traditional hand-weaving also survived longest in the South. Southern Appalachian women were still weaving overshot coverlets at the turn of the twentieth century. These women and their coverlets helped in inspire a wave of Settlement Schools and mail-order cottage industries throughout the Southern Appalachian region, inspiring and contributing to Colonial Revival design and the Handicraft Revival. Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was often used in the production of Southern coverlets, both to grow and process the raw materials, and to transform those materials into a finished product.

Here I am with the first of an ongoing series of equipment reviews. If you’re into sport technology / wearable technology, you’ve probably heard of DC Rainmaker. His product reviews are invaluable. Although I don’t claim to be anywhere near his level, I thought it would be a good idea to do something similar for the weaving equipment world. Weaving equipment is expensive. There’s no getting around that. It can also take up a considerable amount of space. The purchase of a new loom is rarely an impulse purchase. Looms are also specialized for certain types of weaving. I’ll never forget the panic one day of welcoming my students to a tapestry weaving class only to discover that one of my students had been told (I’ll never know by whom) that a tapestry loom capable of using four sets of string heddles was the same as a 4-shaft floor loom.

So today, I’m starting with a review of the Ashford Katie table loom. The Katie has been out for some years so it’s not a new loom. I purchased mine new on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 through my local yarn shop. It arrived on Saturday, July 28.

I am not a fan of table looms. I’ll state my prejudice right here. Mostly, I don’t like them because of how far I have to reach to raise and lower the shafts. It winds up being more of an upper body workout than I like. The Katie has won me over. One of the easiest things about weaving on it is how easy it is to flip the levers to manipulate the shafts. Using levers to manipulate the shafts (or a direct tie-up floor loom) is slower than a loom with lams and treadles. This is a cost of using a table loom. A huge advantage, and one that I stress to my students, is that you gain an understanding of the warp thread movement that produces the cloth.

The Katie’s weakest point, as it comes from the manufacturer, is the use of tapestry warp thread as apron ties. I truly went past the lengths of thread in the accessories bag looking for the apron ties. When I realized that the tapestry warp thread pieces WERE the apron ties, I was shocked. Ashford uses much stronger nylon apron ties on all its rigid heddle looms from the least expensive to the most expensive. Rigid heddle looms typically don’t put as much tension on a warp as multishaft looms.