Tartan Design Questions

**TheOfficialBren** · 3rd April 16, 02:43 PM

I would like to design a tartan to commemorate my upcoming nuptials. I would then like to have a kilt and some other items made. I'd like it to be heavy weight pure new wool. Knowing that it will take some time to do the job in full I'd like to start soon as we are tying the knot when I get home from deployment.

What is the first step that I need to take?
What are the necessary succeeding steps to take?

Thank you very much, friends, for your wealth of advice.

**McMurdo** · 3rd April 16, 03:57 PM

I would first go over to Scotweb and use the tartan designer

https://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/

This was my first step in designing the Scottish Wildcat Tartan. It took less than a year to get from design to fabric.

**Todd Bradshaw** · 3rd April 16, 05:25 PM

Yep, the Scotweb designer works very well (though it's kind of addictive - you've been warned). You might as well start with the "weaver's colors" selection. Pick four or five colors, adjust your yarn counts as desired and start designing. When you have a pattern you are liking, hit the "enlarge" button and it will give you a picture of it that looks very realistically like the woven cloth will appear. It's a user-friendly interface and fun to play with whether you eventually have one woven or not. Some of the tartan mills will weave as little as 8-12 meters of tartan in various weights. If needed, they will also usually mail you some actual yarn samples for verifying the colors before you have it woven. I don't know the typical turn around time, but I've had orders arrive at my door in as little as one or two months from final design confirmation. At this point, we have three versions of our tartan in hand, one more being woven as we speak and a final one to do sometime in the future (like I said...addictive).

**KyleAisteach** · 3rd April 16, 06:23 PM

I used Marton Mills to produce my tartan, because I wanted to do PV, but I, too, started with the ScotWeb Tartan Designer. Mine was about 6 months from design to bolt-in-hand. I do plan to have ScotWeb produce some proper wool kilts for me at some point, but the spouse and I are currently suffering from unstable waistlines and I'm not spending that kind of money until I believe the kilts will fit us for years to come.

**TheOfficialBren** · 4th April 16, 05:40 AM

Thank you, sirs. Is there anything that I should keep in mind when designing said tartan? Form, thread count, things of that nature?

**KyleAisteach** · 4th April 16, 08:10 AM

The ScotWeb design tool is pretty good about letting you know what size your sett will be based on what you're doing, and whether or not it's a good size for kilting. Bear in mind, however, that it bases its estimates on their heaviest wool option, so the sett will be smaller if you go for something lighter weight. But if you're registering the tartan, you're actually registering the ratio, not the specific thread count, so when Marton Mills made mine in PV, they upped the thread count to make the sett a more reasonable size for kilting (I designed it as a 6" sett, what they produced after upping the thread count is a 4.5" sett).

If you're using ScotWeb to produce the tartan/kilt for you, they will give you an option of three palettes to choose from, two of which will have very little resemblance to what you design, but are quite lovely. Don't obsess about particular shades, because they will, necessarily, change in production.

Having now made a kilt, I don't recommend designing an asymmetric tartan. I seriously debated it and am now very glad I didn't.

Those are the life lessons from having done this that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more...

**Todd Bradshaw** · 4th April 16, 10:20 AM

A couple of other things....... Assuming that you have designed a tartan that you like, which the software says is a good sett size for kilting, and it looks good in the enlarged preview, you really won't be seeing an awful lot of it. The preview will probably only show you a bit more than one sett (maybe a woven piece that would only be 6"x6" or so). In many cases I've found that in order to really see what the tartan looks like, you need to see a lot more of it, with the pattern repeating several times.

What I do is take a screen capture of the preview, stick it in Photoshop and stitch a whole bunch of them together - yielding the image that a hunk of tartan that is a couple feet square would have. Without a photo program, I suppose they could even be printed, cut out, and taped together. Some of the designs that I liked on the designer looked quite different when you could see more repeats. Some seemed rather boring, others just didn't do what I thought they would do, and some I just no longer liked. The tartan designer is quite good, but there is no way I would invest in any new design without first getting some sort of look at a bigger piece of it.

For example: This was my design #15 as seen on the designer (I eventually drew more than 30 designs, so I just numbered them to keep track of them and we finally settled on pattern #6 for our tartan- hence the Bradshaw T6 tartans shown above).

This was the enlarged preview the designer gave me. So far, so good. It even looks like woven cloth.

But when I stitched a bunch of them together to get a better idea of what the expanded pattern would look like, I got this weird op-art effect that I didn't really like and hadn't anticipated when looking at the previews. It kind of brought up a mental image of folks behind me in the parade of tartans falling over because they got dizzy looking at my kilt.

I don't think I would ever have noticed it without seeing the expanded preview - at least until the bolt arrived........

**KyleAisteach** · 4th April 16, 10:37 AM

Originally Posted by Todd Bradshaw

What I do is take a screen capture of the preview, stick it in Photoshop and stitch a whole bunch of them together - yielding the image that a hunk of tartan that is a couple feet square would have.

Now that you mention it, I did the same thing. Very highly recommended practice. It did prompt me to change my design subtly.

**Todd Bradshaw** · 4th April 16, 05:41 PM

During the design and ordering process you also want to make sure that your wool tartan will be woven with kilting selvedge edges. These factory finished edges will be the bottom of your kilt, with no hem required. The weaver's design team will most likely have this in mind when you order a kilt-weight tartan, but check anyway - just to be sure.

**figheadair** · 4th April 16, 09:35 PM

Originally Posted by Todd Bradshaw

During the design and ordering process you also want to make sure that your wool tartan will be woven with kilting selvedge edges. These factory finished edges will be the bottom of your kilt, with no hem required. The weaver's design team will most likely have this in mind when you order a kilt-weight tartan, but check anyway - just to be sure.

Having a selvedge, as opposed to a tucked edge, is only possible from some weavers. Dalgliesh still offers it on some of their cloth, Elliots on all of theirs.