Overshot Woven as Lace on Eight Shafts

My latest project is intended to be a table runner 20” wide by 8’ long for my dining room table. I wanted to weave using spring colours and this celery was exactly that. I chose to try something new for me ‘Overshot Woven as Lace’. Basically you take an overshot pattern and weave it using the same warp as weft for both tabby and pattern. There is a tabby shot between each pattern pick, so it follows the Overshot rules.

This was how the pattern looked on PCW, pretty nice I thought.

This was how the pattern looked on the loom. The colour looks funky, but it was the best I could do given the light today.

Even though I made sure to alternate the tabby picks, there was definite deflections on some of the pattern picks. I started out by weaving 2” with sewing thread as the weft to make sure my hem will be flat, so I was off to a good start. I unwove and rewove this piece several times… I tried pattern – tabby – pattern …repeat, then tabby – pattern – pattern – tabby …repeat. Nothing seemed to get rid of the scrunching, I didn’t like it.

Back to PCW where I pulled out the tabby picks and made the patterns just single shots. This is my new PCW pattern.
This is how it wove up – I’m thrilled. I know that if you weave Overshot with out half tones it is called Monk’s Belt; not sure if there is another name for No Tabby Overshot, but I can see scads of possibilities for it! Again the colour is wrong, this is a lovely soft celery green in real life.

I found some 2/10 mercerized cotton for the weft that was just one tone and slightly bluer than my warp, so the effect is really lovely. This is weaving up very nicely and the floats give me great texture on the right side, the underside has no raised floats so the runner should lay flat. I’m a happy weaver today!

On another note has anyone out there ever bought mercerized cotton that came on a tube like this? I bought this yarn at a guild sale and there is no makers name; it is some of the nicest 2/10 cotton I have ever woven with. There is amazing luster and the yarn feels very silky. Please let me know at lynneisweaving@yahoo.ca if you know the maker.

Weaving Words
Fell - Gaelic to fold. The last pick of weft beaten down - the fell point.