Help with tartan variant

[RACharlesworth]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking on this website for quite some time (a couple years) but have only recently joined. I'm a member of our local St. Andrew's Society and have also been Scottish country dancer for about 5 years and love all things Scottish so am happy to have joined.

I have a question/would love some advice with regards to tartan variants. Right now I have a couple off the rack sort of kilts, one an acryllic "Heritage (or Pride? I see it listed differently) of Scotland" and a better wool Black Watch that I pretty much wear exclusively. However I'm now at the point where I would really like a really good quality kilt which I'm thinking of getting from New House Highland.

Now the only even remotely Scottish-seeming part of my heritage comes from my grandfathers mother whose maiden name was Johnston. I have no idea whether her forebears actually came from Scotland or not, and don't really have any idea how I would even be able to find out. But given that, I'd like to use the Johnstone tartan. I actually really like the Johnstone ancient, but since another member of my dance group has a kilt in Johnstone ancient I wanted to get something slightly different so I'm thinking of doing a custom variant. Most of my ancestry is actually Swedish, so instead of having blue and green be the primary colors I was thinking of making it blue and yellow like on the Swedish flag.

I used a couple different online tartan designers to try and make something I liked, so I was just wondering if ya'll would be willing to take a look and a) tell me if it looks correct as far as the actually patterning goes (I think it is) and b) since I'd like the kilt pleated to the stripe, if what I've mocked up for that looks like it would be correct or not, and c) whether it is god awful ugly

Any help/opinions/advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

The original Johnstone tartan from the Scottish register of tartans



My variant



And then what I think it would look like pleated to the stripe