Doodling with a Sett

**Ian_G** · 14th January 12, 08:49 AM

I have been doodling ideas for a sett using Tartan Designer for something to represent my family history.
Decided to start with the basic welsh colours, red for Idris the dragon on a green field, and then added blue and white for the Saltaire, representing Scottish ancestors on my mothers side, the blue also represents the Royal Naval history associated with my Grandfather and the fact that I was born in Portsmouth, the home of the Navy, and the red and yellow from the Griffiths crest.

The thread count is DR26 NG152 MB12 W2 NG8 W2 MB12 DR6 DY6 W2 DY2 DR2 and the repeat size is 6.7

All comments gratefully received.

Ian

**haukehaien** · 14th January 12, 10:46 AM

I really like it. Nice combination of colors and a clean design.

**piperdbh** · 14th January 12, 11:33 AM

I like it, too. I'll be interested to see if you take it any farther. I hope you do.

**Gryphon noir** · 14th January 12, 01:00 PM

Tartan designing can be addictive.* I like the tartan designer on the Scotweb site--it provides opportunities to compare other people's efforts, rate them and discuss them as well.

* Known side effects include sleeplessness, and the awkward situations that arise when you look at tartan material and try to analyze it. While riding a crowded bus, I got caught reading the thread count on a woman's jacket: I don't think she believed my explanation, but it others saw the humour in the situation.

**CameronCat** · 14th January 12, 06:05 PM

Very nicely done! It has a smart feel to it and would probably be right at home in a formal outfit. I like the color choices.

**Piipriker** · 14th January 12, 06:22 PM

Originally Posted by Gryphon noir

Tartan designing can be addictive.* I like the tartan designer on the Scotweb site--it provides opportunities to compare other people's efforts, rate them and discuss them as well.

* Known side effects include sleeplessness, and the awkward situations that arise when you look at tartan material and try to analyze it. While riding a crowded bus, I got caught reading the thread count on a woman's jacket: I don't think she believed my explanation, but it others saw the humour in the situation.

I like the Scotweb designer too, especially because of the selection of weaver's colours and the possibility to design asymmetric setts. And it is addictive. I'm on the way to registering, but I'm not yet totally comfortable with the results. I always put the latest effort as background on my macbook and after several days I encounter flaws.

**David Thorpe** · 22nd January 12, 01:12 PM

Very nice, Ian. I like the contrast between the clean green field and the narrow striping. It would present a nice flash pleated to the single red line.
I've been playing with the software, too. One of my alma maters is in desperate need of a tartan and a Pipe & Drum Corps to go with it. When I get the tartan designed, I'll begin to try to convince them.

**OC Richard** · 22nd January 12, 07:01 PM

Very nice! It has the "attenuated" look of early setts (as opposed to the "congested" look of many modern designs).

**RAF** · 22nd January 12, 07:36 PM

Very good looking! nicely done, and a wonderful testament to your family.

**Barb T** · 28th January 12, 04:35 PM

I _love_ the colors and the look of the design, but, I hate to say, from a kiltmaker's perspective, this tartan design would be an enormous headache to pleat. Because you have lots of little stripes at one of the pivots, and because the cluster of stripes is larger than a typical pleat, it will be impossible for a kiltmaker to make a single pleat with that cluster centered and not lose some of the small stripes at the edges of the pleat where they taper from hips to waist. And "vanishing stripes" just don't look good.

Sometimes it's possible to solve this problem by splitting the cluster of stripes between two pleats whose common edge lies at the center of the cluster of stripes. In the case of your tartan design, however, this wouldn't be possible because there's a teeny stripe, which would be impossible to split, right down the center of the cluster of stripes.

So what would you need to do to redesign so that this tartan will pleat well? Two choices. 1) Spread the stripes out so that they have some wider color bands in between to make sure that a pleat of normal size (3/4-7/8" at hips) can taper to a waist pleat size of 5/8" or so) at the waist without losing stripes along the edges. That would mean moving some of the small stripes away from the pivot and making sure that there's enough plain color to accommodate pleat taper. Or 2) make the stripe at the center of the pleat at least 3/8" across so that it can be split between two pleats. If it's much smaller than that, it's almost impossible to split it perfectly and have it look good.

I wrote a few threads on the difficulties in pleating some tartans, and I was going to try to bump them to the top, but they're both closed. So, here they are:

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-stripe-32855/
In the thread above, I show just how hard it is to have a narrow center stripe that has to be split to accommodate a too-wide cluster of stripes at a pivot. If the center stripe had been wider, it would have been easier. As narrow as it is, though, it requires a kiltmaker with absolutely anal attention to detail to make it look good.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-stripe-33454/
In the thread above, the 4th picture down illustrates the point I was trying to make about stripes "vanishing" in the taper and the difficulty imposed by wide clusters of narrow stripes.