Two of my dear friends got married this weekend. I wanted to weave them an heirloom they could treasure and that would keep them warm for the rest of their lives. It had also been about a year since I had woven a coverlet, and I was itching to get back into overshot. I spent a long time searching for a draft and eventually settled on “Double Compass Work” from Margeurite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Source Book (not the green book, but the one that’s entirely block drafts) because of its resemblance to Wedding Ring quilt patterns.
For warp / tabby weft, I chose an unmercerized 16/2 natural cotton from Yarn Barn. I picked it before settling on the draft and mostly because I could get enough of it quickly, but next time would choose a thinner yarn for this project. The wool is Harrisville Shetland in Evergreen.
I chose a sett of 28 epi — this is what worked out with a whole number of repeats across the width of each panel. It was a little close for my liking and made the tabby areas appear just a little bit warp faced. Each panel was 43” wide in the reed already at this sett, and I didn’t want to make the piece too big so I had to work with it.
I also didn’t spend enough time up front deciding what the border would look like; I just sent it off in one direction along a twill diagonal (left). I really didn’t like what this did to the bottom of the circles on the rest of the draft. I pulled out the border and rethreaded it (right). Much better.
My next trial came when I discovered, after weaving a whole sampler piece, cutting it off, and weaving a full 12” of the real coverlet, that I had made a threading error. I found it because I was following my diagonal line of pattern weft blocks and came upon a tabby square where there should have been a solid pattern square, shown inside the red outline above. Luckily because only this small section was misthreaded, I only had to correct a few threads. I snipped them out, made new string heddles for them, and tacked down the warp ends with a T pin to weave back in later.
You can see below the error on the right side vs. the correct threading on the left. The red arrows point to the same areas of the pattern, which should look identical. The yellow line shows where I made the repair, and the blue arrows point to the now-identical areas after the repair.
Most of the rest of the coverlet was chugging along in the weaving zone. I added my initials, the year, and the couple’s initials along the bottom of each panel using a traditional pickup method found in The Coverlet Book by Helene Bress. The letters are made of floats over a background box where every other thread is raised (in my case, harnesses 1 & 3) within the box. The rest of the panel is woven as normal.
And now it lives out west with its people! I cried a lot when I gave it to my friends. I’m really proud especially of how well I matched the seams and I hope it brings them joy for a long time to come.
Project details:
“Double Compass” four harness overshot draft from Marguerite Davison’s Handweaver’s Source Book
28 epi, sleyed 2-2-3 in a 12 dent reed
43” wide panels in the reed, 37” wide after wet finishing
each panel woven to 133.5” total length under tension
15 yard warp which gave me enough extra for about 1 yard of sampling
final measurements: 110” x 115”
tabby & warp: 16/2 unmercerized Natural cotton from Yarn Barn
pattern weft: Harrisville Shetland in Evergreen