4 shaft overshot weaving drafts made in china

I never really thought of using different colors for overshot before, but after feeling inspired by a group discussion, I decided to try it! I like it a lot and will probably do it again. The warp is pink, yellow, and blue. The tabby weft is the same rotation of pink, yellow, and blue, while…

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.

The “Davison” book, is a bible to many weavers. However, when I was teaching I never showed it to my students. That was because I was teaching them how to make their own drafts. And the “Davison book” taught recipes. Tonight I looked at the Table of Contents and saw there are 3 whole chapters devoted to twills. The entire book is for 4 shafts (harnesses).

Here is my own copy, the cover worn out and tucked inside. That tells you how much I, myself, have looked at that book. There are times when I’ve wanted a recipe—and to know something was going to probably turn out. And following a recipe can be fun. There are hundreds of ideas in this book all the drafts are included!

However, all the drafts are meant to be read differently from the way most weavers these days and for a long time learned to read them. It tells you so on page XII, but who reads those pages usually? Her tie-up drafts tell what shafts are to be LOWERED. Even when I was learning in the 70’s we learned to read drafts that in the tie-ups, the little o’s told what shafts were to be LIFTED. The mantra was “bubbles rise”! But in this book, there are little x’s in the tie-up drafts and that those x’s represent shafts lowered. That’s because in the olden days almost all looms were counterbalance looms and you treadled to pull the shafts DOWN. (and that made the other shafts rise!) This photo shows you what to do when a draft has x’s and the instructions are that they are for lowered shafts. You treadle all the shafts that are not indicated. So if the book wants 1 and 2 and down, then you raise 3 and 4 to accomplish the same thing. In the photo I show bubbles wherever there are no x’s. That means you raise those shafts.

This is how I learned to read drafts in the 70’s and taught my students for many years. It’s the same as the Davison book except for the tie-up drafts as I explained above. Each section is read starting at the dark solid lines dividing the quadrants. It means that sometimes, you read right-to-left and sometimes, vice versa. Sometimes, you read from the top down and other times from the bottom up. You can follow the arrows and see that they work outward from the dividing lines. An example is that I read threading drafts and thread right-to-left.

The Strickler book seems to have come out in 1991 and my copy is the 17th printing. That was when I was busy teaching theory so never discovered the book. It relates to the Davison book but all the patterns are for 8 shafts. There are hundreds of wildly interesting patterns. And the drafts are all included. I counted that there are 7 chapters on twills!

Warning! This is what I wrote at the beginning of my drafting chapter in “Weaving for Beginners”: “Knowing how to read weave drafts and write your own is enormously satisfying and is a tremendously important part of weaving and designing, but it is not the only part to know. What drafts don’t tell is anything about the yarns, colors, ends per inch (epi), the beat or the wefts per inch (ppi), for instance. When you read directions for a project in a book or magazine, you must read every word that is written about the project. All that information is crucial to reproducing what the directions are for…. Also, pay close attention to any photographs or graphics.”

I wove some samples and decided to make this for my scroll. The warp was handspun singles from Bouton. I wanted to see if I could use this fragile cotton for a warp. I used a sizing for the first time in my weaving life. The pattern weft is silk and shows up nicely against the matt cotton.

This illustration and quote are in The Weaving Book by Helen Bress and is the only place I’ve seen this addressed. “Inadvertently, the tabby does another thing. It makes some pattern threads pair together and separates others. On the draw-down [draft], all pattern threads look equidistant from each other. Actually, within any block, the floats will often look more like this: [see illustration]. With some yarns and setts, this pairing is hardly noticeable. If you don’t like the way the floats are pairing, try changing the order of the tabby shots. …and be consistent when treadling mirror-imaged blocks.”

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.

In this article, Verda describes how one of the ways commercial moiré fabrics are made is by physically pressing a moiré pattern into the face of the fabric with rollers that have a moiré pattern engraved on them using pressure and heat.  But Verda wanted to achieve a moiré effect in a woven structure so she used a divided draft, superposing two twills.  I think she used the word “superpose” rather than “superimpose” because it’s a more scientific term.  I followed Verda’s instructions and wove a few moiré samples using her drafts from the article and then designed my own drafts and wove some more samples.  In this post I’ll be sharing my moiré experience with photos, drafts and notes.

One of Verda’s drafts is for a moiré evening bag that I used to weave Sample #1 below.  The photo shows the mostly weft-faced front and the mostly warp-faced back.  Verda’s draft has a straight and an undulating twill threaded alternately – one twill on odd warp ends and the other one on even warp ends, and it has alternate treadling as well.  To weave the fabric for her evening bag she used shiny rayon yarns that work really well for creating a moiré effect.  I used yarns that are not as shiny as rayon – white 10/2 pearl cotton for the warp at 28 epi and blue and tan 5/2 pearl cotton for the weft.  The finished cloth is fairly stable and somewhat thick with areas of very long floats among areas of firm plain weave.

Sample #2 below is my own design.  This time I used white 20/2 rayon for the warp at 40 epi and purple and orange 5/2 pearl cotton for the weft.  The floats are not as long as in Sample #1, but still long:  9 in the front and 17 in the back.  But surprisingly the finished cloth is very stable.

Below are different views of a partial draft for Sample #2.  I  like using straight and undulating twills, but Verda notes that you can also use other types of twills like point twills.  In this draft each twill uses its own threading, treadling, and tie-up with a total number of 15 shafts and 15 treadles.  Verda recommends an odd number of shafts because it produces a better moiré effect.  Most moiré drafts are very long and this draft is also too long to post a full repeat of it here.  I thought of using Fiberworks’ “interleave” feature to generate the draft, but it doesn’t seem to work with an odd number of shafts and treadles.  So I did it manually with the help of the “copy” and “paste” features.

Next are two samples I wove from another one of Verda’s drafts.  Samples #3A and 3B are front and back of the same sample using alternating black and white 20/2 cotton for the warp, and alternating purple and tan 20/2 cotton for the weft.  The sett is 40 epi.  In this sample, I think the mostly weft-faced front and the mostly warp-faced back are both interesting.

Sample #4 below uses the same threading as Sample #3A/B but the 20/2 cotton warp is all white, the 20/2 cotton weft is all black, and the sett is closer at 54 epi.  There is something very different about this sample – both twills are woven simultaneously by using 2 treadles at the same time rather than alternate treadling.  The photo shows only one side, but both front and back are mostly warp-faced and look similar.

In the last photo below Marilize used white 20/2 mercerized cotton for the warp and 4-ply purple knitting yarn for the weft and the finished fabric is for decorative fashion blanket throws for the bed with a plain chenille lining on the back to cover the long floats in the warp:

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.

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.

(NOTE: There was a slight error in the threading. The initial “1-2” sequence should only be worked 3 times, not 4. The PDF has been updated as of 2.1.16)

If you"ve always wanted to learn to weave, but didn"t know where to begin, this is the video for you. This course is designed to acquaint you with the basics and help you choose a direction in which to begin. It starts with an overview of what handweaving is, what can be woven, plus a look at several types of looms and how they work. You will become acquainted with a number of small tools used by weavers, as well as the vocabulary of weaving terms needed to understand the process. You"ll learn about warp and weft yarns, and how their size, weight, elasticity and fibre content relates to specific projects and fabrics. The detailed exercise in figuring out how much warp and weft is needed for a project will become a valuable resource as you continue with future weaving projects. You will also learn how to prepare (measure) the warp using a warping board. This course is recommended as a prerequisite to other video weaving courses for those who are new to weaving. An exciting new hobby awaits you!