Converting Overshot Patterns To Summer & Winter

The I love to weave overshot and I also love summer & winter. I thought I'd combine the two. The John Landes collection of patterns by Mary Atwater, gives threading a for both overshot and summer & winter for most of the patterns. Those patterns were the inspiration for my latest experiment.

I decided to make a few wraps. I used "Periwinkle", a miniature overshot pattern by Josephine Estes, as my profile draft. It is a great little overshot pattern and it's fun to weave. Here is the threading...

To convert the design to summer and winter, you will thread each square in the overshot design as a 4 thread summer & winter block. For example, the twill border, threaded for overshot, would be 4,3,2,1. For summer & winter it would be 1,6,2,6; 1,5,2,5; 1,4,2,4; 1,3,2,3. Here is the draft....

I threaded 5/2 cotton in natural for the warp, sett 15epi. I used various colors of 5/2 as tabby weft and alpaca from Galler Yarns as pattern weft.

Here is the result....

The overshot version of Periwinkle as compared to the summer & winter version.

Same warp, but using a different treadling and color scheme; "winter" side

A view of the "summer" side 

I can not wait to get these wraps off the loom!!!! 

Happy Weaving!

More Summer & Winter

Before I show another project, I though I'd show you some finished work. Here are the other two runners that I made in my 1st attempt at summer & winter. Both used 5/2 cotton as warp & tabby weft and Kauni wool yarn as pattern weft. 

This runner was treadled 1-2-2-1 or 3-4-4-3 (with tabby). 

This runner was treadled 1-2-1-2, or 3-4-3-4 (with tabby). 

I did learn an essential thing about this weave, after of course, I had been weaving for about 30 inches. You must balance a summer and winter weaving draft with an additional thread on the left of the piece. In this case, I should have threaded one more thread on shaft one. Bearing that in mind, I planned a new warp for pillows in summer & winter. 

I wound a 6 1/2 yard warp of 3/2 cotton, 207 ends, including 2 for floating selvedges. So far, apart from the Kauni color changing yarn, which is actually a bit too thin to use as pattern weft with 3/2 cotton as warp & tabby, my favorite pattern weft is Cascade 220. The color spectrum is spectacular and the pattern fills in nicely when wet finished. 

I planned on eight pillow tops. Then I broke out the yarn stash. Another favorite yarn of mine is Tangier also by Cascade. I first wove two pillow tops in the 220 in different shades of blue. Then I realized that the Tangier skein I had happened to coordinate perfectly with either shade of blue. Yes!!!

Treadled 3-4-4-3 and 1-2-2-1

One of my favorite things about Sunner & Winter is that if you start with 2 colors, you end up with 3. As you can see from the plain weave off-white border, the colors range from off white to the main pattern color to a muted shade of the pattern color. 

Happy Weaving!

Summer & Winter Weave On 4 Shafts

I've been wanting to try summer & winter weaving for a while now. I started drafting patterns in early January. When the last warp was finally finished, I wound another 11 yard warp, this time in 5/2 pearl cotton. I used a sett of 15. For overshot, using 3/2 as warp, I used a sett of 10. The recommended sett is 12-18. I figured that for summer & winter, since it's also a tied weave with a thick pattern weft, I should do the same with the 5/2. It's recommended sett is 18-24 so I used 15. Next time I might open it up even more to 13 or 14. 

Once threaded and tied on, I decided to sample each treadling available when using 4 shafts. I have included the treadling sequence in brackets below as blocks A & B. Tabby, shafts 5 & 6, is used alternately with every pattern pick. 

From top to bottom, 

1. Dukagang (A 1111/2222  B 3333/4444)

2. Brick (A 1212, B 3434

3. O's (A 1221, B 3443

4. X's ( A 2112, B 4334) 

I went with X's (which gives you O's on the other side) and used Brown Sheep Fingering wool in a gorgeous teal for pattern weft. 

I LOVE it!!!!! 

 

When I finish this scarf I'm going to do one in Kauni yarn but I haven't decided which color. I'm going to use the brick method for more crisp lines. I can't wait to see what it will look like!

Happy Weaving!