How much fun it is to work with a pattern, keeping everything the same except for changes in the weft colour.  I have been working in Overshot weave for a few months, and enjoying the process of changing weft colours as well as treadling blocks in different orders to produce different looking cloth.

I love how these towels can look so different with a simple change in colour.  The warp is 2/8 cotton in green, yellow, blue, red, and magenta, with navy blue used for the dividers.  The pattern weft is also 2/8 cotton, and the tabby is 2/16 cotton in the same colours as the warp.  The Overshot pattern is Johann D-‘s Design No. 2 from Marguerite Porter Davison’s “A Handweaver’s Pattern Book” pg. 138.  I made some changes to the pattern by reducing the number of threads in the floats to accommodate my warp sett of 18 ends per inch.

As I wove the first towels, I kept the white pattern yarn consistent throughout, while changing the tabby colour to create a colour gamp grid moving across and along the towel.  I used the navy tabby to frame each colour square of the grid.  The first towel was all white 2/8 cotton for the pattern yarn, and 2/16 in green, yellow, blue, red and magenta for the tabby weft, and navy for framing in both warp and weft.  Each square changed slightly as the tabby weft colour changed and played against the warp colours.

The second towel was all black 2/8 cotton pattern yarn, and the coloured 2/16 tabby weft yarn.

For the third towel, I changed the pattern weft colour for each Overshot row, and used a different colour for the tabby.  Some rows I wove in plain weave.  Some rows I inlaid only a portion of the Overshot, leaving the remainder of the row in plain weave.

One warp, three looks, so much fun!  More overshot patterns are going on my loom very soon.