Variations and Options

A threading draft is just a set of pre-programmed options which may be executed in a variety of ways.

The above photo is a sampler I did for the GCW master weaver certificate.

The requirement was to take a 'traditional' overshot threading, weave a repeat of that, then weave it in 'rose' fashion, then in 'monk's belt' fashion.  (There were other options as well, but this is what fit on the scanner flat bed.  Besides, it's the 'star' and 'rose' fashions I want to talk about here.)

I covered this more extensively in The Intentional Weaver so I am just going to cover a few points.

Not every overshot draft can be effectively converted to 'rose'.  If you look at the above photo, the top design has very strong diagonal lines running through the entire motif.  The middle sample, has very strong circles in the design - the 'rose'.

The conversion can also be 'tricky' because the treadling sequence depends on exchanging blocks in the design.  This can be done by not changing the tie up and treadling it, or by changing the tie up and following the 'star' (traditional) treadling. 

But the underlying threading has to be able to exchange those blocks to create the circles or 'roses'.

It is possible to take a 'rose' threading (M. P. Davison has a section on rose designs) and convert them to a star, too.

An overshot threading can be woven in other weave structures.  If the design has small units/blocks, it can be woven in a 2:2 twill, lacey, honeycomb along with others.

Overshot is characterized by areas of floats (generally considered the design/motif), half-tones and plain weave.  Larger sized designs may have very long pattern floats, so sometimes the pattern float is tied down so that there is no plain weave area as such, but only the floats and half-tones. 

When going to overshot on eight shafts, it is possible to have no half-tones at all, or weave the overshot motif in double weave so that you don't have long floats, but still retain the motif.  Much like I have been taking overshot motifs and converting them to twill blocks (because I have the 16 shafts needed to do that.)

I frequently use the traditional Snail's Trails and Cat's Paws motif for tea towels.  It's a fairly large motif which has a strong graphic look to it. 

The warp on the loom right now is the  Canadian Snowflake twill (derived from the 8 shaft Swedish Snowflake into a four shaft twill) which I converted into twill blocks.

Once someone understands the potential in a threading draft, they can play with it and manipulate it to create unique textiles.