Interesting weaving issue

[Barb T]

Hi all,

A customer sent me a double-width of custom-woven fabric in the beautiful Lamont Heather tartan to make two kilts. I cut off the piece for the first one, then, a couple weeks later, went back and unfolded the remaining tartan. Here's what I saw:



This is a big sett with a basic Black Watch undercheck, so it's an ABAC type tartan as shown. I just about had a coronary when I saw the stripe that I've circled above. Clearly there's a mismatch in the sett. I thought, holy schmoly, is that a weaving error?? What if it falls at the top of the other kilt I have to make? After a few minutes of agony, I tumbled to what was going on. See below:



Because I'd already cut off the piece for the other kilt, it wasn't obvious that the center of the mismatch is actually the center of the double width piece of fabric. Tartan is normally woven with a pivot at the center fold so that the tartan repeats across the fold without a break in the sett, so that there is no mismatch at the fold. In this piece of Lamont Heather, the sett stops and then reverses at the center fold, but not at a pivot in the sett, hence the mismatch.

I presume that the mill did this in order to place a particular part of the sett at the selvedge (probably to better hide the tuck-in selvedge). As long as someone was going to make kilts from this piece, all would be good, because the center of the tartan at the fold will be cut off anyway. If someone were going to cut a piece width-wise and use it for something other than a kilt, however, the mismatch in the selvedge would actually show in the piece.

I've only encountered this a couple of times before, and both previous times was with an asymmetric tartan. The mill reversed the sett at the center fold in order to make it possible for a kiltmaker to split 4 yards of double width and make a kilt without a hem. Again, it's fine for kiltmaking, but wouldn't be OK for other applications where the full width needs to have a continuous sett.