Having your own tartan!

[HarveyH]

Given the thousands of registered tartans, I think you have to have a good reason or a strong individual desire to design a personal tartan. Apart from anything else, getting cloth woven to order is an expensive business.

But a good tartan design is not just about colours. If you are not used to pleating cloth yourself, I would advise a careful conversation with a kilt maker when designing a tartan. The size of the set and the number and spacing of the stripes make a huge difference to things like the way a tartan can be pleated. I am always amazed that some tartans can be pleated to several different stripes as well as the set, whereas other can only successfully be pleated to maybe one stripe in the pattern.

[unixken]

I created my "Leaf Peeper" tartan to celebrate a general "activity". I take an annual fall foliage pilgrimage back to New England every year, where the locals refer to the influx of autumn tourists as "Leaf Peepers". D.C. Dalgliesh produced the fabric for me, and is creating the kilt (it's scheduled to ship, on Monday!) As I will likely be the only person to ever wear a kilt in this tartan (despite having placed no restrictions on the design), I guess you could say it is effectively a personal tartan.

It is pricey to produce a one-off tartan. But if that's not so great a concern, and you'd like to add such to your wardrobe, there's no reason not to.

That said, a tartan is generally meant to show an association with others in a group. However, as often as I am asked "what tartan is that?" when wearing my other kilts, I felt the opportunity to share the background of a tartan I designed myself, what it means, and describe the process of having it woven and produced into a kilt, will be part of the return on investment.

[RockyR]

But a good tartan design is not just about colours. If you are not used to pleating cloth yourself, I would advise a careful conversation with a kilt maker when designing a tartan. The size of the set and the number and spacing of the stripes make a huge difference to things like the way a tartan can be pleated. I am always amazed that some tartans can be pleated to several different stripes as well as the set, whereas other can only successfully be pleated to maybe one stripe in the pattern.

Very sound advice.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I have mixed feelings about designing personal tartans.

On the one hand I agree with those who say, "For goodness' sake, there are literally thousands of registered tartans already, and most woolen mills keep stock of hundreds of the most common ones. With clan, family, district, fashion and other tartans readily available, do you really need to add to an already overpopulated and confusing tartan world by creating yet another one?"

But then I also sympathize with the view expressed by Ruardi Stewart Erskine in his book The Kilt and How to Wear It, published way back in 1901. I can't quote the exact passage at the moment, but he was discussing tartans and hearkening back to a day when tartan identity was looked on with less rigor. While he advocated wearing one's proper clan tartan when representing the clan at a Highland Games or some other clan gathering, for personal day to day wear he advocated for the wear of what he called "hill checks." Today we might call them "unnamed fashion tartans." Just a pattern pleasing to the eye that the wearer fancied. He further talked about how much he enjoyed creating these hill checks, in different colors for the different seasons, and said he wished more people would try the enjoyable pastime of creating and wearing their own patterns.

I think the difference between what Erskine was advocating and the concept of a "personal tartan" today is that today people have the opportunity to officially name and register their personal design for all of prosperity, whereas in Erskine's day they did not. You came up with a design you liked, found a weaver to create it for you, had it made up into a kilt, and wore it around. Period. Today people feel almost obligated to register it, which means giving it a name, and coming up with a "design rationale," (I chose this color for this reason, that color for that reason, the design means this to me, this line represents that), and deal with the decision of who may weave and wear it. It just gets much more complicated.

For myself, while I have designed personal tartans for many people in the past, I never had the slightest desire to create one for myself (there were so many other tartans I enjoyed wearing already). That changed purely by accident. I had created a series of four or five tartans for a particular design project; that project ended up not moving forward and so the designs were not used. One in particular, however, I had come to be especially fond of and thought it was a shame not to have it woven. I ended up toying with the design off and on for several months, and just fell in love with the pattern. Eventually I had it woven for myself and registered not to my personal name, but to my business name (which as a sole proprietor effectively makes it a personal tartan). That's how the New House Highland tartan was born. Rather than deciding I wanted a personal tartan and then creating one, I created the tartan first and decided to make it my own.

[artificer]

That is about where I ended up after thinking about designing a personal tartan.
It could make sence for those of us (like me) with no clan connections but is it really worth the extra money?

If you really want to design a tartan, make something like artificer did with the R'lyeh tartan. That way you might create something that will be worn.

Indeed! Between the original run and the most recently submitted order over 260 yards double width of the R'lyeh sett have now been ordered!

Ia! Ia! C'thulhu Fhtagn! :cthulhusmiley:

[kiltedwolfman]

I designed a tartan, registered it ( http://www.tartansauthority.com/tart...hawes-personal ), had it woven and then made a kilt from it. I wanted something that was very personal to me, would hold a special meaning to me and others related either through blood or experience as well. Fortunately when it was woven it turned out very nice with plenty of great pleating options and I have since had non related people ask me if I would be offended if they wore it. I certainly would not be! While it holds special meaning to me I am flattered that others find it nice enough that they would want to wear it too. I have told people that as long as they explain where it comes from it what it's original purpose was they can wear it all they like. ( oh and I have to be the one to make the kilt for them hehe )