Overshot

MAFA2023-001

This towel is woven in the colors of the Norwegian flag to reflect Caroline Halvorson’s 1904 pattern and my Norwegian heritage. The selvedge has a denser sett, as described by Dixon in her book, A Handweaver’s Pattern Book. Ends Ends 5-8 and 400-403 have two 8/2 threads through each heddle instead of one, and they are sett at 4 ends per dent. Therefore, 407 ends show in this pattern, yet 815 are warped in order to fill the double-threaded heddles.

Weft: Tabby weft – 16/2 unmercerized cotton, color – natural. Pattern weft – 6/2 unmercerized cotton, doubled in each pick. Colors: Royal blue and Cranberry red from the Woolery. The pattern weft overshot throws are shown, also use 16/2 tabby.

I wove the hanging tab of 16/2 unmercerized cotton in a warp-faced plain weave.

MAFA2021-044

I used a Josephine Estes miniature, “Cambridge Beauty” (www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/monographs/eje_min1.pdf), to design this towel. I added some striped segments that altered the miniature repeats to create the structured effect I was seeking in the towel.

735 ends plus 2 FS each side.

I played with the treadling to create many different versions of the towels. The draft shows the treadling for the main pattern repeat. For the towel submitted, I used a segment of the treadling repeat for the border along each edge of the towel and then wove some plain weave with striping before starting to weave the main pattern repeat.

MAFA2021-009

This draft is from a terrific issue of Heddlecraft titled “Wicked Good Weaving—Squares and Grids.” This particular draft, in what Robyn Spady terms “x” style, was a lot of fun to weave. I was really drawn to the “X” motif between the tables.

Please note that my submitted draft corrects a threading/treadling error in the published draft.

MAFA2019-015

Use tabby. I used a jack loom so I reversed the tie-up shown in the book.