4 shaft overshot patterns factory

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…

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.

This post is the third in a series introducing you to common weaving structures. We’ve already looked at plain weave and twill, and this time we’re going to dive into the magic of overshot weaves—a structure that’s very fun to make and creates exciting graphic patterns.

Overshot is a term commonly used to refer to a twill-based type of weaving structure. Perhaps more correctly termed "floatwork" (more on that later), these textiles have a distinctive construction made up of both a plain weave and pattern layer. Requiring two shuttles and at least four shafts, overshot textiles are built using two passes: one weaves a tabby layer and the other weaves a pattern layer, which overshoots or floats, above.

Readers in the United States and Canada may be familiar with overshot textiles through woven coverlets made by early Scottish and English settlers. Using this relatively simple technique, a local professional weaver with a four-shaft loom could easily make a near-infinite variety of equally beautiful and complex patterns. If you’d like to learn more about overshot coverlets and some of the traditions that settlers brought with them, please see my reading list at the bottom of this article!

As it is twill-based, overshot will be very familiar to 4 shaft weavers. It’s made up of a sequence of 2-thread repeats: 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, and 1-4. These sequences can be repeated any number of times to elongate and create lines, curves, and shapes. These 2-thread repeats are often referred to as blocks or threading repeats, IE: 1-2 = block 1/A, 2-3 = block 2/B.

There are three ways weft appears on the face of an overshot cloth: as a solid, half-tone, or blank. In the draft image I’ve shared here, you can see an example of each—the solid is in circled in blue, the half-tone in red, and the blank yellow. Pressing down the first treadle (shafts 1 and 2), for example, creates solid tones everywhere there are threads on shafts 1 and 2, half-tones where there is a 1 or 2 paired with 3 or 4, and nothing on the opposite block, shafts 3 and 4. Of course, there’s not really nothing—the thread is simply traveling on the back of the cloth, creating a reverse of what’s on the face.

Because overshot sequences are always made up of alternating shafts, plain weave can be woven by tying two treadles to lift or lower shafts 1-3 and 2-4. When I weave two-shuttle weaves like overshot, I generally put my tabby treadles to the right and treadle my pattern picks with my left foot and my tabby with my right. In the draft image I’ve shared above, I’ve omitted the tabby picks to make the overarching pattern clearer and easier to read. Below is a draft image that includes the tabby picks to show the structure of the fabric.

Traditional overshot coverlets used cotton or linen for warp and plain weave wefts, and wool pattern wefts—but there’s no rule saying you have to stick to that! In the two overshot patterns I’ve written for Gist, I used both Mallo and Beam as my pattern wefts.

In the Tidal Towels, a very simple overshot threading creates an undulating wave motif across the project. It’s easy and repetitive to thread, and since the overshot section is relatively short, it’s an easy way to get a feel for the technique.

The Bloom Table Squares are designed to introduce you to a slightly more complex threading—but in a short, easy-to-read motif. When I was a new weaver, one of the most challenging things was reading and keeping track of overshot threading and treadling—but I’ve tried to make it easy to practice through this narrow and quick project.

Overshot works best with a pattern weft that 2-4 times larger than your plain weave ground, but I haven’t always followed that rule, and I encourage you to sample and test your own wefts to see how they look! In the samples I wove for this article, I used 8/2 Un-Mercerized Cotton weaving yarn in Beige for my plain weave, and Duet in Rust, Mallo in Brick, and Beam in Blush for my pattern wefts.

The Bloom Table Squares are an excellent example of what weavers usually mean when they talk about traditional overshot or colonial overshot, but I prefer to use the term "floatwork" when talking about overshot. I learned this from the fantastic weaver and textile historian Deborah Livingston-Lowe of Upper Canada Weaving. Having researched the technique thoroughly for her MA thesis, Deborah found that the term "overshot" originated sometime in the 1930s and that historical records variably called these weaves "single coverlets’ or ‘shotover designs.’ Deborah settled on the term "floatwork" to speak about these textiles since it provides a more accurate description of what’s happening in the cloth, and it’s one that I’ve since adopted.

Amanda Ratajis an artist and weaver living and working in Hamilton, Ontario. She studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and has developed her contemporary craft practice through research-based projects, artist residencies, professional exhibitions, and lectures. Subscribe to herstudio newsletteror follow her onInstagramto learn about new weaving patterns, exhibitions, projects, and more.

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.

Twill:Twill along with plain and satin weave is one of the three simple weave structures. Twill is created by repetition of a regular ratio of warp and weft floats, usually 1:2, 1:3, or 2:4. Twill weave is identifiable by the diagonal orientation of the weave structure. This diagonal can be reversed and combined to create herringbone and diamond effects in the weave.

Double Cloth: Usually associated with professional weavers, double cloth is formed from two plain weave fabrics that swap places with one another, interlocking the textile and creating the pattern. Coverlet weavers initially used German, geometric, block-weaving patterns to create decorative coverlets and ingrain carpeting. These coverlets contain twice the yarn and are twice as heavy as other coverlets.

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.

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.

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.

Twill:Twill along with plain and satin weave is one of the three simple weave structures. Twill is created by repetition of a regular ratio of warp and weft floats, usually 1:2, 1:3, or 2:4. Twill weave is identifiable by the diagonal orientation of the weave structure. This diagonal can be reversed and combined to create herringbone and diamond effects in the weave.

Double Cloth: Usually associated with professional weavers, double cloth is formed from two plain weave fabrics that swap places with one another, interlocking the textile and creating the pattern. Coverlet weavers initially used German, geometric, block-weaving patterns to create decorative coverlets and ingrain carpeting. These coverlets contain twice the yarn and are twice as heavy as other coverlets.

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.

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.

Arlene tells me she has 40 towels woven up and ready to sell. Well, I am behind the 8 ball and must get a move on and weave up some more towels. I was glad to have kept the draft and math involved with a previous project, as this will save me time. The "Keep it Simple" towels will be the next on the loom.

I have volunteered to demonstrate Kumihimo at the festival. Kumihimo means braid & cord in Japanese. There are so many websites that have information on the many different kinds of braids, I am going to keep to 7 or 8 strand braiding with several different patterns. I have a commercial foam disk, but have also bought some foam at the dollar store and have made some other types of braiding disks. The last time I did this (2 years ago), I posted the pattern instructions on my blog for a few weeks and will do so again.

As always, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. One of the members of my online weaving group on Our Unraveled indicated that she would like to make towels in the Lee’s Surrender overshot draft. Now Lee isn’t easy. It may be only a 4-shaft overshot draft, but it combines several elements, has a wicked border and isn’t for the faint of heart. Or at least isn’t for beginning weavers. The good news is that it is in Marguerite Porter Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book. The original book is from the 50’s and the draft is written out in the older format, but it still manageable. (Hint: beware of getting a new version of the book. I’ve heard that it has been gutted and has maybe half the drafts of the earlier editions.)

I don’t know where the original draft came from. In the book Davison says that it is adapted from an earlier pattern. Since weaving drafts, like quilt patterns, are frequently named for historical events, I assume this one is truly named for Lee’s Surrender of the Confederate troops at Appomattox Courthouse. If so, that would place it in the late 1800’s. The border is based on the Blooming Leaf pattern that appears in other overshot drafts, and this gives the border its intricate, eye-appealing size. The tables that form the center design are themselves quite simple – a star design commonly found in overshot. However, they allow the piece to be wider or narrower at the weaver’s discretion simply by adding or removing repeats.

I volunteered to make the draft for the requested towels and post it to the group. I also suggested that we use it as an overshot weave-a-long or WAL. Several people agreed and I think we’ll get going on the first of September. I was able to find the original notes and WIF (Weaving Information File) I entered when I made the place mats. I hadn’t finished the treadling diagram, but it wasn’t hard to finish up. I did all the calculations for two towels and wrote up the instructions. Unfortunately, I couldn’t test the towels prior to releasing the PDF. I’m hopeful that everything is fine and I didn’t make any mistakes. I suppose we’ll see.

Fine-toothed nylon ratchets provide precise tension control. The conveniently located heddle blocks on the sides of the loom hold the rigid heddle in the up, down, or neutral position. The heddle, available in 5, 8, 10 and 12 dents per inch, is made of durable ABS plastic, with large eyes and slots. Flip is ideal for plain weaves and pick-up patterns.

For most loom owners, in particular jack loom owners, the tie up is relatively straight forward. Now if you own a countermarche loom, you can immediately double the number of tie up cords. The loom needs to have cords to both the shafts that sink and to the shafts that rise as the action of a countermarche loom evenly pulls the warp threads apart, both up and down, to create the shed. The benefits? well, usually the shed is generously large and it seems to me that you can achieve a more balanced weave due to the even tension when the shed is opened. This style of loom is easier on joints as pulleys make for a smooth action.

Jack looms apply upward pull on some threads and the weight of the shafts lightly dip the warp threads on the bottom of the shed. Your leg provides most of the muscle to lift the shafts.

As many of you know I have some joint issues and so bending forward can aggravate the lumbar area of my back. I take my time setting the treadles cords up, taking a break and stretch, sometimes do something else entirely, then come back and do another couple more treadle tie-ups. I seem to use anything from eight treadles to twelve. If a full twelve is in play, that"s 144 ties!

So with the current project on the Spring there is a twelve shaft / twelve treadle tie up and it looks like this: *Be sure to click on any image to enlarge okay?*

This Gebrochene and Hind und Under and its a complex twelve shaft pattern. It would make a stunning table cloth if traditional linens were used. I made two projects using the same tie up.

This is an M"s and W"s design...another twelve shaft design, given the old tie up I want to use. So I replaced the tie up with the existing one on the Louet Spring and it now looks like this:

I think this version is nicer than the original and I think you can expect to see this on the loom in the near future! I couldn"t find my twelve shaft snowflake twill but more or less know the theading by heart and so I made this draft up:

I belong to some weaving related groups on FaceBook. One is 4 shaft weaving and the second is 8 shaft weaving. One contributor is weaver "4-8...Weave" (you can find more information on it here)It was just released this past week and I have my copy in my hands.

Margaret takes a weaving program, and in this case Fiberworks PCW Silver, and uses the computer program functions to show you how to use them to design and get the most from the program. She emphasizes that these techniques can be used with any of the programs out there on the market, many of which have free demos to try out. It focuses on four shaft and 8 shaft drafts but these can easily be expanded to twelve, sixteen etc. There are tutorials on snowflake twill, polychrome, interleaved, block substitutions- crackle, and more. There are colour pictures and very clear diagrams and screen views. I opened at any page and snapped a picture ( and I hope Margaret doesn"t mind!) I plan to review it again once I"ve had time to work with it.

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.

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.

Figure 4: Dorothy and Harold Burnham’s Keep Me Warm One Night. Figure 5: Threading draft derived from Figures 1–4 with blocks circled. Figure 6: Balancing the draft. Figure 7: The balanced draft.

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.

I learned to weave on 8-shaft looms, so I went out and bought an eight-shaft loom, bought a book of eight-shaft patterns, and wove for several years without ever thinking about what could be done with four shafts. And then I bought a copy of Marguerite Porter Davison"s Handweaver"s Pattern Directory, full of 4-shaft loom weaving patterns, and was blown away by the possibilities. My creativity works best within parameters, so I welcomed the challenge of working with four shafts. But as I learned more about weaving, I began to see that the possibilities for creative cloth go far beyond patterning; with weave structure, color, texture, oodles of yarn choices, supplemental warps and wefts, and all the combinations thereof, I realized that four shafts present few boundaries and almost limitless possibilities. I also came to realize that some of the loveliest cloth is simple, working within one or two dimensions to produce something deeply satisfying.

There"s so much you can accomplish with just four shafts! 4-shaft loom weaving opens the door to weaving with great technique. And you won"t believe what you can accomplish: color and weave effects, twill, huck, lace, overshot and more!

In honor of the amazing, versatile four-shaft loom, we compiled four beautiful free 4-shaft loom weaving projects, available to you in this downloadable eBook. See the possibilities of 4-shaft weaving come to life with these patterns for handwoven dish towels and napkins.

Towels are a perennial favorite weaving project, because each towel on any given warp can be woven with a different weft color, treadling, or stripe sequence to create a varied but coordinating towel set. Handwoven towels make perfect gifts, too; everyone can always use more towels. This project will teach you the basics of weaving twill towels on a four-shaft loom.

Towels make an ideal format for studying different weave structures. Patterned borders and lace textures are yours for the experimenting! Practice overshot and turned monk"s belt in the two towels included in this eBook. These towels were selected from a project where a weaving study group wove a different towel every month for a year. Project includes tips for your own weaving study group!