Handwoven Overshot Table Runner

A couple of months ago, I was browsing through Cotton Clouds' website, especially the lengthy section of their weaving kits.  I kept coming back to one in particular, a kit they'd made up for a pattern that appeared in the magazine Handwoven, the November-December 2010 issue, beginning at page 38.  Having subscribed to that magazine for years, I looked for that issue and immediately read the article and looked through the weaving draft.  It is amazing to me that you can weave so much patterning with so few shafts on your loom.  This very intricate and very old-fashioned design uses only four shafts.

Completed table runner

I thought about it for a day or two and, then, ordered the kit.  Since I already had something on my loom, it took a little time for me to begin this project.  So began my journey to completing this pattern reminiscent of 18th century bed coverlet patterns, only in miniature.  It's only 17 inches wide after finishing, and 35 inches long.  But to get this amount of detail in so little space took 577 threads, at 30 epi (ends per inch) and, thus, for a balanced weave, about 29 threads of the pattern weft (raisin colorway), and the same for the gold colorway or, combined, 58 ppi (picks per inch).  I was using my 40-inch Norwood floor loom, and it took some work to get it packed down that much, as the pattern called for.

I always use my AVL warping wheel to warp sectionally.  What I neglected to think of is that for every 2-yard crank of the warping wheel, I am actually using an extra 8 inches.  If you multiply that by 577, you end up needing an extra 128 yards, so after almost completing winding on the warp on the rear sectional beam, down to the last section (2 inches), I ran out of one of the warp colors and would've run out of the second one before I finished.

copy of the pattern with threads and treadling draft

Completely frustrated, I ordered another two mini-cones of the 20/2 cotton for the warp from Village Spinning in Solvang, CA, only to find out that Cotton Clouds had substituted one color in the warp in making the kit.  Frustrating!  After very little thought, I completely removed that warp and threw it away.  It didn't amount to even $10 worth of yarn, so that was an easy decision.  I rewound with my newly acquired mini cones of 20/2 cotton and started the process of threading the heddles.  I don't know about other weavers, but overshot is tricky to thread because the pattern blocks overlap, so sometimes it's difficult to remember where the heck you are, even though I put this pattern into my Fiberworks program and printed out a large scale threading plan and carefully (I thought) marked off where I was in the threading pattern, then sleyed the reed, being careful to get two threads into each dent of the reed, tied onto the front beam and began to weave.

runner folded back to show the back side

Hmm, something wasn't right.  In two places there appeared to be errors. More frustration.  I hadn't made a threading error in many years.  I rechecked the threading pattern, from the right-hand side, carefully, to catch the two misplaced threads which, of course, were on the last third of the threading pattern.  I use flat steel heddles on my loom because I often weave with very fine threads, and the inserted eye heddles that came with my loom would, by friction, cause warp thread breakage.  Anyway, I cut out the "bad" heddles and made string heddles to fix what was wrong, resleyed the reed, only to discover at the left end of the reed that I had one thread left.  Having started with one thread on the right-hand side, I knew something was wrong in the reed, since it was an uneven number to begin with, 577.  I literally looked for 3-4 hours.  Talk about frustration!  I ended up tying on and beginning to weave again, so I could find the error, which became obvious immediately then.  So I had to untie the warp, fix the reed threading, which was close to the right-hand side, fortunately, and began weaving again.  I kept thinking this project did not want to be woven, but I'm not one to give up on something I really want to do,   As you can see, it was worth ALL that effort.  The weaving went fairly quickly, even with two shuttles, one for the raisin colorway, and one for the gold.  Color me happy.

finished runner