Who can weave my tartan?

[Nick Fiddes]

Barb is (as usual) absolutely right.

And sorry Steve, but I'm a bit disappointed to see you circulating such incorrect information. As forum owner I'd have expected you to be more aware of the facts about UK weavers. And if you couldn't 'confirm or deny' you could easily have checked with me directly first!

So yes, to address the OP's question, at DC Dalgliesh we are very much still weaving in-house on our traditional single width loom in several weights of wool and silk, which we can produce as little as four metres. This includes our superb 16oz worsted wool with the traditional kilting selvedge that should be ideal for your needs. Please just contact our team for advice.

To clarify about the double width fabrics, there's been a lot of of nonsense spread about, much of it by competitors or others with an axe to grind. The fact is that we no longer weave on the double width shuttle looms as even after a lot of restoration effort the old machines simply couldn't maintain the quality standards we wanted to promise every customer.

The weaving business has always been a collaboration of skills. Different businesses have always resolved that jigsaw in different ways. Some have in-house dying, some don't. Some have in-house spinning, some don't. Some stock their own yarns, some don't. Same for finishing, winding, warping, weaving, and darning, etc. All we're doing is to reshape the business we rescued to be as fit as possible for the demands of today's customers, with the highest possible product.

But we're still producing fabrics of exactly the same quality as ever, other than for the selvedge (and that's something we're working on). We'd have been outsourcing anyway (as most mills also do!) as we've been increasing the range of qualities we are now producing (such as tweeds and cashmeres) and the volumes.

The gain to our customers is that quality is more consistent, timescales are faster, and our volume fabric pricing is much lower. We're now very competitive like-for-like at almost every quantity. So I'm fairly proud of what we've achieved so far.