Monk's Belt

I wonder who Monk is and why his belt is a subject for weavers.

I did a little research and found that Monk's Belt is like colonial overshot, except it only has two blocks and is threaded on opposites and as such will only have pattern blocks and tabby background. It will not have the half tones we are familiar with when we think about overshot. It is a two shuttle weave on four shafts.

Block A is threaded on shafts 1-2 and Block B is threaded on shafts 3-4. The tabby is 1-3 vs 2-4.

The project I am putting on the loom called for 250 heddles on each shaft. Not one to want to shift heddles, I decided that if I pretended I had two four shaft looms together that I wouldn't have to shift heddles. (Having an 8 shaft loom comes in pretty handy here.) So I rewrote the draft and put some of the blocks on shafts 1-4 and others on shafts 5-8. When I fix the tie-up, shaft 5 will be tied with shaft 1, shaft 6 will be tied with shaft 2, ect....  



This shows I am almost done sleying the reed. The cross holder was made by DH for this loom.



Threading the heddles from the back of the loom.