Scotweb's new online Tartan Designer is now live!

[Nick Fiddes]

Firstly, huge thanks to those of you who have been playing around in, and providing feedback on, our first (mostly) working version of our online Tartan Design facility. In the intervening months, we've made lots of improvements, many in response to your ideas and responses. In particular I'd like to individually thank Rex, for several very helpful suggestions which have led to lots of work(!) but we think a better result.

The invitation-only password restrictions have now been removed, so anyone can use it. You still need to be logged-in to save a design, or see your own saved designs, of course. But it's totally free to use, until of course you choose to have your design woven.

There are lots of new tricks that should make designing tartans more intuitive and easier. For example, you can drag colours into any position in the threadcount sequence... and change all instances of any colour by dragging onto its swatch... and hover over the preview to identify which thread to adjust... oh, and just find out for yourself. :-)

We're also delighted to be providing a quite extraordinarily wonderful expert review panel, for anyone wishing to commission a Critique. In addition to Brian Wilton (Director of the Scottish Tartans Authority) for historical expertise, we now have on board the head designer for House of Edgar (the world's largest producers of traditional kilting selvedge tartans) for weaving expertise... and also, I'm delighted to say, X-Marks' own Barb Tewksbury for her kiltmaking expertise. So for anyone wanting to create their own new tartan design for serious use, we now offer the facility to have full creative control over its development, in the confidence of having it professionally appraised and perhaps tweaked towards perfection... for a fraction of the professional design fees that you'd previously have paid without enjoying such direct personal involvement. We think this has to be a good thing.

We hope the new layout and interface is considerably clearer too. There's a few details still to finish (such as the Help tools, that aren't yet fully implemented). But it should mostly be working otherwise.

You're the first people to see it, and we won't be announcing it fully quite yet... until we're 100% sure it's all working robustly. Hope you enjoy it. And as usual, anything that is broken or confusing... please let me know!!

Check it out at: http://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/

Nick

[Lady M]

This is an excellent tool, very easy to use. I could see spending a few hours playing around with it. Thank you very much for implementing it and sharing it with us!

[skauwt]

thanks for the info

[KFCarter]

Have already checked it out and like it very much! Thanks for implementing this great, easy to use tool.

[GMan]

That's great.

[Fit2BKilted]

I want the edges to be a bit rough, so; why not let me?

[Paul Henry]

I want the edges to be a bit rough, so; why not let me?

Generally speaking the small number for setting up a warp, is with 2 threads, lots of reasons for this, but the 2 threads help to maintain a solid line rather than a dashed one( I suspect as you would like). It is one of those conventions of weaving and not usually broken. A commercial weaver is less likely to entertain such a break from the custom than a smaller individual one, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

[Nick Fiddes]

Generally speaking the small number for setting up a warp, is with 2 threads, lots of reasons for this, but the 2 threads help to maintain a solid line rather than a dashed one( I suspect as you would like). It is one of those conventions of weaving and not usually broken. A commercial weaver is less likely to entertain such a break from the custom than a smaller individual one, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

Correct. Wearing my hat as a Scottish Tartans Authority governor, I also see an educational value here in enforcing some of these limits, as it indirectly teaches a little about the complexities of weaving. As well as having a commercial side, I'm really hoping this facility will become widely used by schools etc. and it's little details like this which help to make it authentic.

It's also necessary to keep costs down to the (I think incredibly good value) levels we have. We've had to ensure our weavers aren't faced with unusually complex requests that will take them and us lots of extra time.

For this reason too, we're enforcing a six colour limit on standard designs, as some of our traditional looms can't easily cope with more (and anyway, more usually starts to look messy!). You can use more if you use the 'Pro' colour palette. But we've tried to cover ourselves there by warning that you'll probably be paying surcharges if you ask to get it woven.

[Fit2BKilted]

Generally speaking the small number for setting up a warp, is with 2 threads, lots of reasons for this, but the 2 threads help to maintain a solid line rather than a dashed one( I suspect as you would like). It is one of those conventions of weaving and not usually broken. A commercial weaver is less likely to entertain such a break from the custom than a smaller individual one, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

...Although I had explored the single-thread design element (with another online tartan design product) expressly for its 'dashed line' effect, I ended up abandoning it for aesthetic reasons. BUT that was not my principal complaint with ScotWeb's Tartan Designer:

I object to not being able to set odd-numbered thread counts (other than 1), e.g., 13 threads of Bottle Green, which is 'auto-corrected' by the software to 12 What is the justification for that?

[Rex_Tremende]

Terribly sorry to have caused so much work, Nick, but I'm awfully pleased with the outcome. Thanks for your team's innovation and services to the tartan-loving community.

Regards,
Rex.