Enlarged Sett

[Calgacus]

Kyle, scaling from your friend Duncan's photo it would appear that his sett is about 12".
With that in mind, and the fact that the Dalgleish 18oz fabric does not appear to use thicker threads, I'd say your only option is to go with the regular Chattan (clan) sett which will be a shade under 10", or attempt some tweaking of the sett to enlarge it to 12" or more. I think you would be best to do that by carefully increasing the thread counts of the wider stripes only and trying to maintain the balance and overall appearance of the tartan. Technically, you'd be creating your own sett or at least variation of the Chattan sett, so you may wish to run that past your friends/family/chief so as not to tread on any toes.

I too am interested to see what comes of all this, as it has a lot of bearing on my own ideas for a custom weave. Having bought swatches, I discovered that neither of the mills that produced Johnston Weathered actually stuck properly to the Johnston sett! The thread counts of the actual samples varied from the registered sett, and from the computer images shown on their websites. Not a big issue, but it was the thin stripes which were wrong, and it was fairly noticeable (to me, at least). Anyway it was enough for me to think 'stuff it, why not design my own tartan, given that my patrilinear family has no tartan and is just a sept of a border family'.

Don't hold your breath though, this is a long term project, there is a long list of things higher up the priority list for my disposable income.

[creagdhubh]

Kyle, scaling from your friend Duncan's photo it would appear that his sett is about 12".
With that in mind, and the fact that the Dalgleish 18oz fabric does not appear to use thicker threads, I'd say your only option is to go with the regular Chattan (clan) sett which will be a shade under 10", or attempt some tweaking of the sett to enlarge it to 12" or more. I think you would be best to do that by carefully increasing the thread counts of the wider stripes only and trying to maintain the balance and overall appearance of the tartan. Technically, you'd be creating your own sett or at least variation of the Chattan sett, so you may wish to run that past your friends/family/chief so as not to tread on any toes.

I too am interested to see what comes of all this, as it has a lot of bearing on my own ideas for a custom weave. Having bought swatches, I discovered that neither of the mills that produced Johnston Weathered actually stuck properly to the Johnston sett! The thread counts of the actual samples varied from the registered sett, and from the computer images shown on their websites. Not a big issue, but it was the thin stripes which were wrong, and it was fairly noticeable (to me, at least). Anyway it was enough for me to think 'stuff it, why not design my own tartan, given that my patrilinear family has no tartan and is just a sept of a border family'.

Don't hold your breath though, this is a long term project, there is a long list of things higher up the priority list for my disposable income.

Thanks, Calgacus. Your assistance and contribution to this thread has been invaluable. That being said, my mind has been tinkering back and forth with regards to either going foward and attempting to enlarge/tweaking the Chattan sett to my satisfaction and to a point in which it would actually work, or simply leaving the sett woven as it is from D.C. Dalgliesh.

As I stated previously; the Chattan Clan sett is fairly large already, and my concerns for the kilt with an even larger sett having a balanced/smart appearance with a good number of pleats seem to be growing by the minute! It's so difficult to tell how all of this will work out in the end, since we obviously don't have the actual tartan in front of us with the sett enlarged at different degrees. However, if you take a look at the Chattan Chief tartan, you will see that sett is indeed larger than than of the Chattan Clan tartan. The only difference being, a white line was added to the red ground. I am rather curious about the sett size of the Chattan Chief tartan and how it would look when woven. My thinking is, that the overall sett size of the Chattan Chief tartan (minus the white line on the red ground), when applied to a newly woven Chattan Clan tartan, may be just the size I am looking for. This is definitely a challenge to get it right, but I shall not give in just yet!