John Landes #2 in Linen

I've been wanting to weave this forever. 

I never really liked the way it looked drafted for overshot. I knew that I needed 6 shafts to do the design in Summer & Winter, they way I wanted; so I waited.

Fast forward to this past March & the addition of my 8 shaft Macomber to my little family of looms. Now, I could weave this. Well, not really. Adjusting to this loom has been more of a learning curve than I had thought. Again the pattern would wait. 

Fast forward again to a few weeks ago when I took the overshot workshop with Norma Smayda. One of the most important things I learned in those few precious days, was to not be scared of a fine warp. Bearing that in mind, I decided to go ahead with my long awaited project. 

I'll be using 16/2 Bockens linen for warp & tabby weft. As I'm still warping, I'm not sure if I'll use cotton or wool or maybe a heavier weight linen as pattern weft. Ah, the possibilities!!!

Here is my profile draft, and as I said, I'll be weaving summer & winter, so each square represents 4 threads. 

Warping using two coffee cans to hold the spools of linen.

467 ends ready to go!

Happy Weaving!

Overshot, Rose Fashion

Still working off that 11 yard warp, I decided to play around a bit. I decided to weave off the rest in rose fashion. I corrected my threading error and changed the threading on the end to work with the "rose" pattern. I also added a twill border, 2 repeats of 4 threads on either side. 

Here is the draft......

My tie up was : 4&3, 3&2, 2&1, 4&1 and using treadles 5 & 6 for tabby.

Here is a piece using Kauni yarn as pattern weft.......

I really have to get a better replacement pin for my temple ;)

This piece has a dk weight alpaca/wool knitting yarn as pattern weft.....

I'm trying to finish this warp, but as you can see, it's quite chilly at the loom today. 

Hopefully I'll finish it tomorrow. Up next, summer & winter scarves.

Happy Weaving!

Overshot Coverlet

I'm currently working on the 2nd panel of what will be a pretty large overshot coverlet. 

The warp is 3/2 pearl cotton sleyed at 10 epi. The weft is Cascade 220 heather blue. 

Here is the draft.......

I lost the pin for my temple and was trying to make due using a screwdriver but it was too fiddly and I ditched it. 

I cut the 1st panel off the other day....

I finished the 2nd panel last night. As you can see from the picture, I had some tension issues on the left side of the 1st panel. I was much more consistent with my tension and ppi for the 2nd panel. This resulted in about a 4 inch difference in length :(. 

Not on to be discouraged, I decided to seam them anyway. 

As my husband says, it looks good from far, but is far from good. I plan to try and stretch and iron it flatly into submission  after some wet finishing. 

Though I only could find one mistake with the actual weaving, there were some fatal flaws from the beginning. #1, I skipped 6 threads in the pattern while threading. Happily it was a symmetrical mistake which is why I didn't catch it right away. 2nd, I should have added one extra thread in the pattern for the left edge of the panels, the edge to be joined. Since there was one too few, the seam is even more obvious. 

So, what have I learned from this gargantuan project? Double check the threading several times, constantly measure motifs & ppi to ensure consistency and when a master weaver says that they never weave overshot without a temple, listen!!!!! 

I did wind on a massive warp so I hope to get a 2nd, albeit smaller, coverlet out of this learning experience. Since the 1st coverlet was done in star fashion, I'll do the second in rose fashion. 

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Weaving!