Mastering Overshot weaving: Crafting a luxurious handwoven organic cotton table runner

Introduction: Weaving a luxury overshot organic cotton table runner

There are many things that I love about weaving. Besides my enjoyment in all things creative and colourful I perhaps most enjoy the fact that as a weaver there is always something new to learn. Weaving allows me to blend my creativity and technical skills with my interest in challenging myself to weave something new whether that be a new design, new technique or a different weaving yarn. This blog discusses a recent project to weave a range of Overshot organic cotton tableware including table runners, table mats and napkin rings.

Understanding Overshot Weaving

Overshot weaving involves creating a pattern that floats over a tabby woven background. This technique typically utilizes a contrasting colour for the floats with the tabby weft rows being woven in the same colour as the warp yarn. This technique serves to enhance the design’s visibility and depth. The beauty of overshot lies in its ability to create detailed patterns while maintaining the fabric's strength which is in part down to the tabby rows which adds stability to the fabric.

The selection of yarn is crucial to achieve the desired look and feel. For my project I chose fine 8/2 cotton yarn which is well suited for Overshot weaving. The fine yarn allows for an intricate design. This fact that the cotton yarn has a smooth texture and doesn't shrink measurably when finished means that the woven pattern is also maintained in the final piece.

Preparing the organic cotton warp

I decided to warp the loom with around 10m of natural cotton to enable me to weave a number of Overshot pieces. I had decided that I wanted to weave a variation of the design called 'Sun, Moon and Stars' taken from Marguerite Porter Davison's book ' A handweaver's pattern book'. The 8/2 cotton was to be woven at a sett of 24epi and I wanted to have a table runner of approximately 13-14 inches in width. Allowing for the shrinkage of the cotton upon finishing I decided that I needed the warp pattern to have a width of approximately 400 ends. The repeat for the pattern was 76 and I chose to have 3 repeats with a boarder on each side resulting in the need for 403 ends plus a further 4 for a floating selvedge.

Threading the Loom

Accurate loom threading is vital for achieving the complex overshot pattern. Like most weaving patterns, an incorrectly threaded warp thread can easily be identified in the final woven piece so careful threading is essential. To help me to do the threading accurately, I worked in pattern blocks, counting the warp threads through the heddles for each block. The chosen pattern was a 4 shaft weaving pattern but I decided to use all 8 heddles varying the use of shafts 1-4 and 5-8. The reason for this was that I wasn't sure that I would have sufficient heddles on just shafts 1-4.

Weaving the organic cotton Overshot table runner

1. I first began with about 3cm of Tabby Weave: The aim of this was to create a boarder at the end in plain weave. I wove this using the 8/2 ecru cotton which was used for the warp.

2. Hemstitching: After the boarder at the end was woven I hemstitched the fabric to give a beautiful edging with this hemstitching being repeated at the other end after weaving. If you are interested in hemstitching then you might like to read this hemstitching tutorial blog found here.

   
   

   

   
   

3. Transition to Overshot weaving: For the main weaving I chose to weave with a navy blue 8/2 organic cotton with a really fine ecru cotton yarn for the tabby rows. The pattern repeat had 97 rows and I programmed my computer dobby with the pattern. You can read more about my handmade computer dobby here.

   
   

   

   
   

4. Checking for Errors: |After weaving a short length, I inspected the pattern and could see a couple of errors where particular warp threads had been threaded through a heddle on the incorrect shaft. This was resolved by making some handmade heddles on the correct shafts with the warp thread being re-threaded correctly through these heddles.

   
   

5. Weaving the correct length: I decided that I wanted the table runner to have a final length of around 1.6m so I wove a length of 1.9m to allow for the shrinkage on finishing. I wove some tabby weave at the end using the 8/2 cotton yarn to match the start of the weave and completed the end with another hemstitch.

   

   
   

6. Cutting the fabric from the loom. I wanted to have a long fringe so I cut the weave from the loom with a long fringe of around 15cm.

7. Finishing the fabric. The fabric was washed by hand on a hand hot wash. It was then dried and pressed. The fringes were trimmed after ironing. I found that using a wide toothed hair comb to comb out the fringes along with ironing helped me to get a straight fringe which was then trimmed.

   
   

The handwoven organic cotton table runner

Further Overshot weaving

I was delighted with the result of the woven table runner so I decided to weave further fabric for table runners, a wall hanging and also table mats with co-ordinating overshot napkin rings. My thinking is that each of these items would make beautiful housewarming or wedding gifts.

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