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Bertha Gray Hayes was a North American weaver, active in the mid twentieth century and is best known for her miniature overshot designs of which she designed nearly 100 original patterns. I thought I'd use her designs to make some blankets for our yoga studio using some of Susie's homespun wool from our ouessant sheep for the weft and a 8/4 cotton for the warp. 

Because there is a jump in scale (BGH's original designs used 20/2 warp and 10/2 weft) there would be unacceptably long floats if I just used her drafts with these much thicker yarns. Our wool fulls and felts quite easily on wet finishing, so it is the cotton floats that I've reduced with the introduction of alternating tabby picks (as the weaver did in the photo below) in 8/2 cotton .

I ll be weaving these blankets on the Spring II loom as double width. This is a method whereby I weave the cloth in two layers on the loom with a fold on one side and two loose selvedges on the other. When the cloth is removed from the loom it unfolds into a piece twice the width. As the warps tend to weave tighter at the selvedges, it is important to prevent this on the side that will contain the fold as this will create a ridge in the cloth when unfolded. There are a couple of ways to prevent this: Sleying the reed slightly wider adjacent to the fold for a couple of dents and/or adding a tight length of fishing line adjacent to the fold which is woven in, but then withdrawn at the end of the weaving. The tension on the line helps to prevent draw-in.  I'll probably try both together.

More or less the draft I'll be using, but with different colours and heavier yarns, this cloth has two colours in the warp (red and orange) I'll just have a single cream colour. 

As both of the final selvedges for the blanket lie on the same side during weaving and must be kept apart, a special technique must be used to ensure they don't interlock...more later.

On the megado two more "swirl" scarves. Different colour way - sand and white, and this time I m substituting 16/2 tencel for the 30/2 silk, they take the sett. 

Each warp is about 700 ends.