On this day, I warped an Ashford table loom (16” wide and 8-shaft) with a 4-yard warp of 10/2 mercerized cotton (also Ashford, in Fog colourway) and started learning how to weave overshot. At first, I used some Gist Beam 3/2 organic cotton that I had on hand, but it was really too thick for weft and so I switched to 5/2 mercerized cotton (also Ashford) and it started to work beautifully. What a fascinating structure.
This sampler is from Patti Graver’s book “Next Steps in Weaving” and I believe is the Star of Bethlehem threading. The first sample was woven as written originally, and the second sample was just treadling the “blocks” to see where everything was. Then the third sample was woven in “star fashion”.
After a few messed up tabby picks (forgetting which shafts I raised to make the tabby shed), I settled on the convention of raising 1 and 3 if the shuttle was