china leaves

I changed my mind. I do like overshot. I am enjoying this pattern very much.

The first weft I chose, a very nice wool, turned out to be too large to square the pattern easily. Resleying would have made the ground too sleazy, so I turned to the shelves for another pattern weft, and came up with this mercerized cotton. The ground warp and weft are 20/2, the pattern weft is 10/2, sett at 30 epi.

The selvedges aren't great. I thought I was being clever by using shafts 5 & 6 to thread a plain weave selvedge, but in fact the pattern weft pulls a little bit and leaves a gap between the patterned area and the selvedge. Next time I'll just put a plain twill edge, it will be more stable and consistent with the rest of the cloth.

I'd forgotten how lovely it is to watch patterns emerge. And speaking of next times, I took down The Complete Book of Drafting to see what it has to say about overshot. It reminded me of so many things! Four blocks on eight shafts, manipulation of halftones... for clothing fabric I rather like the idea of halftones weaving in every block except the pattern block. With the right weight and colors you could get a subtle shimmery pattern, with floats not too long. Tencel perhaps? Linen? Tencel and linen! I've been reabsorbing Davison, and since I'm happily using two shuttles, something I've long eschewed (why? !! it's way faster than knitting or pickup!) I am inspired to also graze on drafts for shawdow weave, summer and winter, and anything Bateman... if I can stop in time, I'll use the end of the warp for some sampling. I seem to recall that somewhere I've seen an overshot treadling for lace effect, but so far all I've found in my home library is examples of overshot as honeycomb. Where in the world did I see that? Did I imagine it?

Comments

[Amber]

Silly me, I didn't even know you wove. I love the colors in this piece, on a more basic level, I used to do bead looming, and really enjoyed the same things, watching the patterns emerge, the ability to keep everything tight and even :)

It looks lovely, just lovely!