Designing a Tartan

[adempsey10]

Does anyone have any experience designing and producing their own tartan? What is the most affordable way of going about this? Ive been to Scotweb and used their designer. If I want some other company to produce the kilt, is my only option to buy the fabric from Scotweb and send it to another company? Do you know of any other companies that create custom weaves at reasonable prices?

Any help or insight would be appreciated.

I'm looking for a tartan that matches my school colours. Purple, Grey and White. I cant find anything I like in other databases, so Ive designed my own.



Thanks,

Alan

[Carlo]

There are some threads about what you have to consider when designing a tartan. Someone will share some links.

I have no experience yet, I'm considering but the costs are holding me back.

Some kiltmakers that offer the special weave:

Obviously our own Matthew Newsome and Scotweb. Don't know about the other North America based advertisers.
Hector-Russel and Nicolson Kiltmaker do, but I think only with registered tartan. Maybe if you ask you can safe some $ with not registering.

Hope that helps.

[kiltmonk]

Hi Alan,

I did this end of last year and had an extremely nice contact with Bonnie Heather. I designed my tartan with the online-designing tool from scotweb and had the tartan registered in May 2012. She contacted a weaver (I think it was D.C.Dagliesh, which belongs to scotweb) and did a very reasonable offer to me and it was a very nice contact, indeed. The main problem for me was, that the tartan cloth would be sent from Scotland to the US and then the kilt from the US to Germany. I took into consideration the cost for customs/duty and shipping -> and that was the show-stopper, so I had Paul Henry done this for me, the tartan cloth also came from D.C. Dagliesh (Scotland->UK->Germany). But for you, I think it would be worth a try with Bonnie Heather (Scotland->US->Can) and even with Paul Henry (Scotland->London->CAN, which I can really recommend, he did an awesome job with some nice, individual gimmicks eg. lining 'pipe related' as I'm a pipe smoker!!). Now I'm proud member of the inofficial PHKOC (Paul Henry Kilt Owners Club ;-) )

You can find the thread here: http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...itional-76361/

If you are at facebook, you can see quite a lot of the kilts, Paul Henry Kilts does. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Paul-...138226?fref=ts

A friend of mine, also here at xmarks, piipriker, did the same with scotweb.http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...arrived-74931/

Also a very nice kilt with perfect craftmanship. But at the time, I had an offer from them, they had raised their prices enormously. But also worth a try, at least to have an offer for price comparison.

Kind regards

[be da veva]

Also, keep in mind that any tartan you design on scotweb's tartan designer belongs to scotweb. They will have the rights for it.

[artificer]

Also, keep in mind that any tartan you design on scotweb's tartan designer belongs to scotweb. They will have the rights for it.

This is no longer the case. About 2 years ago Nick "freed" up the design process. Their tartan designer is now free to use without restriction or "ownership" issues.

ith:

[kiltmonk]

Thank you artificer, that's right.

Here's the passus: source: http://www.scotweb.co.uk/info/your-l...ponsibilities/


Production rights in your tartan designs

You may use our online Tartan Designer for any reasonable purpose, free-of-charge and without restriction. We impose no conditions on how you use any original tartan designs you create. This applies to all designs in our system, including retrospectively.

We will be delighted to supply your designs as woven fabric or ready-made products, and our pricing is highly competitive. But we do not require this. You may commission any weaver to produce your tartan for you as woven fabric. It is only by doing so that you establish copyright or other intellectual property interest in your design. See our notes on your rights. We recommend that for any design in which you have such an interest, you should not publish your designs openly in our Gallery until you have done so.

If you wish a tartan you have designed in our system and then had woven elsewhere to be exclusively produced by another weaver, you should notify us in writing, including a full reference to your design in our system including its name and design number. We will then identify it online as Restricted, and will not weave it ourselves. In the absence of such notification, we assume you are happy for us to weave any design in our system, whether it is known to have been woven or not. Note that whenever we weave a tartan you design, you earn a royalty on the weaving charge, which will be credited to your Scotweb member’s account in the form of Scotweb Points.

We also request that if you go on to formally record with the Scottish Register of Tartans a design created in our online Tartan Designer, please include in the recording notes that it was designed with the help of the “Scotweb Online Tartan Designer“.

Kind regards

Marcus

[be da veva]

Wow, I'm really out of it..... Thank you for the update.

[Lorna]

I have not designed a tartan so I can't help you there but I have had a length of tartan woven and shipped to Canada. It was then sent to Burnett and Struth in Barrie, Ontario to be made into a dancer's kilt. I was pleased with the finished kilt. Many of the pipe bands in the area use Burnett and Struth as their supplier of kilts.

[unixken]

Part of the problem you will find with any "non stock" tartan, especially any that you design yourself, will be finding mills willing to produce short runs of just a few yards. D.C. Dalgliesh specializes in short runs, and through Scotweb, are likely to give you very competitive pricing. Most other mills would normally require much higher minimum yardage, to produce your custom tartan. (Though Scotweb has arranged for a few other U.K.-based mills to do some of their short-run commissions.)

In other words, Dalgliesh may charge you a higher cost per yard, due to the setup charges being amortized over just a few yards.... versus other mills who might be able to provide a cheaper price per yard, but who would require you to buy so many yards that your net total cost is higher. In other words, which is more affordable to you... 8 yards at $100 per yard? Or 30 yards at $85 per yard?

I'm currently waiting on an 8yd hand-sewn kilt from D.C. Dalgliesh, made from a tartan that I designed with the Scotweb online tartan design tool, in 15oz wool. I found the price to be reasonable for what I'm getting. Although not "cheap", I have other kilts from them and can vouche for the superb quality... worth every dollar.

[BCAC]

Hi Alan,

I did this end of last year and had an extremely nice contact with Bonnie Heather. I designed my tartan with the online-designing tool from scotweb and had the tartan registered in May 2012. She contacted a weaver (I think it was D.C.Dagliesh, which belongs to scotweb) and did a very reasonable offer to me and it was a very nice contact, indeed. The main problem for me was, that the tartan cloth would be sent from Scotland to the US and then the kilt from the US to Germany. I took into consideration the cost for customs/duty and shipping -> and that was the show-stopper, so I had Paul Henry done this for me, the tartan cloth also came from D.C. Dagliesh (Scotland->UK->Germany). But for you, I think it would be worth a try with Bonnie Heather (Scotland->US->Can) and even with Paul Henry (Scotland->London->CAN, which I can really recommend, he did an awesome job with some nice, individual gimmicks eg. lining 'pipe related' as I'm a pipe smoker!!). Now I'm proud member of the inofficial PHKOC (Paul Henry Kilt Owners Club ;-) )

You can find the thread here: http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...itional-76361/

If you are at facebook, you can see quite a lot of the kilts, Paul Henry Kilts does. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Paul-...138226?fref=ts

A friend of mine, also here at xmarks, piipriker, did the same with scotweb.http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...arrived-74931/

Also a very nice kilt with perfect craftmanship. But at the time, I had an offer from them, they had raised their prices enormously. But also worth a try, at least to have an offer for price comparison.

Kind regards

I'm also a proud member of the PHKOC. Paul is now my kiltmaker for life and I couldn't recommend him higher. He is a master craftsman who works magic.

See his website here