A reader sent me an email recently asking where to find an overshot version of the Jitterbug pattern. The only place I know of where it is published is in A Handweaver’s Source Book, edited by Marguerite Porter Davison. The pattern is credited to Bertha Gray Hayes and looks like this:

The threading is written in a kind of short hand which must be expanded. The tie-up is assumed to be written according to overshot rules, and the treadling is assumed to be written “as drawn in”.

I had already put the pattern into a design line and profile draft when I was doing it in Turned Taquete.

So I took the profile draft, and using the block substitution tool in PixeLoom for 4-shaft overshot, I transformed the design into overshot.

I had to adjust the weft thickness to thick and thin and add a tabby. But it seems to be a rough approximation of the Jitterbug idea. (P.S. It might be upside down. Not sure. Not sorry.)

Overshot patterns can be scaled down so that the floats are not so long. Weaving it in fine threads sett closely together would also mitigate the long floats issue. I am aware that Hayes wrote a book about overshot miniatures, and that this pattern may be published there in an easier to weave version. If anyone has the book, and it is in there, please let me know!

I am willing to email the Wif file to those who might want to try it out.

I am on the other side of my back surgery and everything is fine! No pain! I just have to wait a month before I can resume regular activities.