I've been wanting to weave a few rugs, but have been so indecisive with a pattern. I ultimately chose Trellis by Bertha Gray Hayes, but opted to weave it as summer & winter, using the overshot draft as a profile draft.
I used "Overshot for Rugs" by Tom Knisley as a guide and inspiration. For his rug, he used 8/4 cotton, doubled, in a 12 dent reed. I don't have a 12 dent reed, so I sleyed 2 ends per dent in my 10 dent reed.
I had a few sleying & threading snags along to the way which might explain why I completely forgot to weave the "twill" border to the bottom of the rug. I put twill in quotes because what would've been a 6 thread twill border, when woven in overshot, now becomes 24 threads woven in 6 blocks in a converted draft.
After weaving for a while, I also realized that I had omitted a 4 thread block. I cut the weaving, added 4 string heddles, re-threaded and resleyed. Not fun.
Here I am weaving the rug at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA as part of their Heritage Artisan Series.....
This is the work of about 5 or 6 children. It was really cool to see them weaving and to see how much they liked it! I know the museum got some pictures of me with the kids and I'll post them soon.
Back to the rug. Always one to try several patterns on one warp, rug #2 was woven with doubled 8/4 cotton in Spanish Blue with a dark heather grey rug wool for pattern weft. I inverted the treadling for the blocks, ie.: 2-1-1-2 becomes 1-2-2-1 and 4-3-3-4 becomes 3-4-4-3 and so on.
I had a bit of warp left, so I made a sample with dukagang treadling; only using the odd numbered treadles for pattern. This would make a fabulous rug and I'll definitely do this one again.
I hand knotted all the fringe and, voila!
I love love love this rug!!!! Here is the blue & grey (pay no attention to the treading error 😢)
Happy Weaving!
