Overshot Treadling Serendipity

I have always thought of the plain weave portions, the accidental blocks, and so forth that occur in structures like overshot and crackle as some kind of disfigurements. If only I could get rid of those and have nothing but sequences of perfect, solid blocks with none of this extraneous stuff. But now something has happened to start me thinking of those so-called extraneous bits as full of possibilities.

I started weaving once more with overshot treadling. I had liked the idea of using three colors, one for warp, and two for weft. I had tried this with the third method of binder treadling. This time, however, instead of blue pattern weft, I used purple. And instead of the third method of binder treadling I decided to do the second. I wanted to see what kind of difference the two created visually.

I had meant to begin with the last group of blocks and go in reverse order. This way I wouldn't have identical blocks next to each other. Since the block I had finished with had been the first block, if I started had the beginning I would have a set of two blocks treadled the same.

As luck would have it, I had not written a note to myself about this (thinking, of course, that I would remember.........) and I forgot. Yes, I forgot. But then I saw what was happening when I was weaving and I saw how interesting this was looking. So interesting that I decided to continue to weave with a block of blue pattern weft with the third binder treadling followed by the same block in purple with the second binder treadling.


Looking at the photo, in the middle is where I started with the purple. There it is clear that the purple overshots lay right over the overshots in the previous block, because I am treadling the same treadles. Then in the next group above, the purple blocks lie in the same place as the blue blocks because, though I have moved to a different treadling, I have used the same treadling for both the blue and the purple.

But I have not used quite the same treadling. The treadling for the pattern wefts with the blue and purple is the same for each set of blocks. But the treadling for the binder threads is different for the purple and the blue. Looking at those non-pattern areas shows that different things happen there when I change the binder treadling. I find this very interesting and I hope to explore this. Someday, but not now. I am continually being surprised about the possibilities in the crackle structure.

To see this whole thing greatly magnified, click on the photo.,

The alert will notice some treadling errors, but for this sampling I simply do not care. I am too delighted with what I see going on.