A couple of days ago I decided it was time to put another project on the loom.  I have a nephew that’s expecting twins in the spring and opted for an overshot blanket.  I wound a 6 yard warp in 5/2 figuring I would weave two in different colors and have some room to play as well.  I was warping the loom this time using a roll of corrugated cardboard.  It went on like a dream, straight, even, perfect tension, yes!

I taped up my draft and started threading my heddles.  Hmmmm, there really didn’t seem like enough threads for the project.  I got halfway through and realized I had miscounted. By half. Ugh.

Now I’ve been known to wind a warp that was twice the number of threads but never under.  So I’m thinking, “What the heck am I going to do now – there’s 6 yards on here and 230 threads?”

It just so happens I was also planning on doing a couple of table runners for gifts later in the winter but there weren’t enough threads to do the ones I intended.  This sent me in search of an overshot pattern that would work for the people the gifts were intended for and spoke about the weaver (this is almost always how my design process goes).

I pulled out Weaving Designs by Bertha Gray Hayes.  This is my all time favorite book of overshot patterns.  I pored through the book for a good long while and finally settled on her pattern Old Fashioned Garden.  It has a 40 thread repeat so I could work it with an open and close of 14 threads and only have 15 threads hanging off the back of the loom in the end.

Today I’ll thread the heddles, tie on and hopefully weave enough picks to see how the design will work.

The babies will have to wait.

As a side note I just wanted to share how amazing this Macomber loom is.  The breast beam is hinged and can be lowered.  Great when you’re ready to thread and really don’t want to take the loom apart.  This loom is so high that I wouldn’t be able to thread over the beam comfortably.  There are so many things about this loom that are simply brilliant in their design.