turning your fabric 90 degrees...

[Barb T]

Hi folks

If it's truly tartan, it won't look any different turned 90 degrees. The definition of tartan is that the warp and weft have the same size, order, and number of stripes of color. If the warp and weft are not identical, it isn't tartan. There's lots of "plaid" fabric out there that isn't tartan, and those are the ones that might have a prominent stripe going warp-wise but not weft-wise. So, the problem doesn't actually arise if you are dealing with tartan.

But, if you have a piece (such as the pin stripe fabric), or if you are just using a piece of plaid fabric that isn't tartan, you could certainly turn the fabric 90 degrees. But, given that fabric is not more than 56" wide, you'd have to put a join in the fabric at five or six places across a kilt that uses 8 yards of fabric. It takes me about an hour to do one join right, and, frankly, it would need to be a really special piece of fabric to get me to add 5 hours to the kiltmaking process!!

Barb

[GlassMan]

Kilt making sounds hard enough as it is without having to worry about piece together fabric. But then I'm never going to try to do it myself anyway.

[Pleater]

I just dive in and do things before I know that they shouldn't be done - I have put joins in but have always made it so the sewing line forms the inner fold of the pleat. I sew the join straight, so the pleat depth is greater at the top than the bottom due to the supression for the waist.

I found the seam distorted the pleat if I tried to put it anywhere else than the back fold.

I have had to cut off the selvages on a kilt made with pieces taken 'across the cloth' as they were 1/4 inch shorter than the rest of the fabric once it had hung for a while.

I make the pleats and check that the join is going to be correct before sewing it. I mean the pleats on each side should lie right without the join being sewn - if they don't before they certainly won't after.

[Jewddha]

Hi folks

If it's truly tartan, it won't look any different turned 90 degrees. The definition of tartan is that the warp and weft have the same size, order, and number of stripes of color. If the warp and weft are not identical, it isn't tartan. There's lots of "plaid" fabric out there that isn't tartan, and those are the ones that might have a prominent stripe going warp-wise but not weft-wise. So, the problem doesn't actually arise if you are dealing with tartan.

[...]
Barb

But Barb, I though I had heard somewhere about "asymmetrical tartans".

(or did I misread something)

[Barb T]

An asymmetric tartan means that the stripes do not repeat in mirror image fashion (e.g., A-B-C-D-A-B-C-D would be asymmetric, as opposed to A-B-C-D-C-B-A-B-C etc. etc., which would be symmetric, because it has "pivot points" or "mirror points"). The same order is repeated in both the warp and the weft in tartan. An asymmetric non-tartan might have A-B-C-D-A-B-C-D in the warp and A-B-C-E-A-B-C-E in the weft.

If you want a picture, let me know.

Cheers!

Barb

[Jewddha]

Think I get it, thank you for clearing that up!

[Barb T]

No prob!

B