Information for tartan buyers

[Benning Boy]

All through my family tree can be found many Scottish family names. Like nearly every member of The Rabble I've wanted a kilt or kilts with a connection to these ancestors. My Mother is a Dalrymple, and the strongest family connection I have to Scotland is through the Dalrymple line. To satisfy my long held desire, I recently I purchased a length of Dalrymple of Castleton #2 tartan from Marton Mills. The sett of this tartan is based on that depicted in a portrait of Sir Robert Dalrymple of Castleton circa1720. The main colors in the portrait tartan are clearly orange and green. Someone registered a tartan now known as Dalrymple of Castelton that is primarily orange and blue, obviously at odds with the portrait. A second version came along that is more nearly like that in the portrait. That's the version I ordered.


The portrait can be seen Here:


http://houseoflabhran.com/blog/jacob...traits-part-2/

Here's what I received.




As you can see the Dalrymple of Castelton #2 of today has its roots in a Jacobite-era tartan.


You can learn more about how I came to order the Dalrymple in these threads:


http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...erested-84056/


http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...lrymple-87172/


http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f254/dd-day-88143/


I repeat some of the information here with the idea that the earlier threads will eventually get buried deeper and deeper in the archives, but that this thread may retain some prominence as it grows and becomes more useful.


The tartan was priced in British pounds(GBP) and I paid in US Dollars (USD)


The bottom line: total cost, including shipping, GBP 595.44. At the time of the final payment the total cost in USD was 908.16. However, when the tartan finally arrived I had to write a check to UPS for $101.25 to cover brokerage fees. I'm assuming part of this went to payment of the tariff, plus a commission to UPS for handling it. That brings the final cost of my tartan to USD 1,009.41. I received 13.9 meters, making the final cost USD 72.61 per meter delivered.


You can learn more about tariffs here:


http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...uestion-88128/


My Dalrymple was priced at GBP 39 per meter. The minimum order from Marton Mills is 11 meters. I made a 50% deposit on the order, based on an 11 meter minimum. I was charged GBP 214.50. I paid that amount on 25 February 15, at an exchange rate of USD 1.54 to the GBP, or USD 330.33. But, when ordering the minimum one has to be prepared to pay for any overage, and in this case the overage was 2.9 meters, a total of 13.9 meters were actually woven. The final cost of the tartan came to GBP 542.10. An absolute minimum of 11 meters would have cost GBP 429. I paid for the balance of the cost of the tartan on 05 May 15. The balance due was GBP 328.10. The exchange rate that day was USD 1.51 to the Pound, meaning I paid USD 495.42, and the total of the two payments was USD 825.75. Adding to that shipping cost of USD 80.54, and the final cost is USD 906.29.The small difference in the exchange rate between the times of the two payments accounts for the difference between the total cost in GBP, and the USD paid, I think.


Exchange rates for other currencies, on the day I made my final payment, where CAD 1.83, AUD 1.93, and EUR 1.35 equaling one GBP.


The 13.9 meters of tartan woven for me is roughly enough for four kilts. I really don't need that many in a single tartan, but there are other uses for the tartan, and others who are interested in buying some of the surplus from me. So, I don't feel like I spent too much. Even though you might pay much more per meter for bespoke tartan woven by other mills than I paid for mine, if you really want only a single kilt length of fabric, you might save money buying from the more expensive weavers – maybe. But, on the other hand, look at it this way; for not very much more you could buy from Marton Mills enough to make yourself a kilt, your wife a hostess dress, your mistress a mini skirt, and all your babies little tartan diapers.


Some additional thoughts. Marton Mills is located in Yorkshire, England. It is perhaps the largest weaver of tartan fabric, but it is not a Scottish mill. Many purists want their tartan only woven in Scotland. I'm not one of those. I'll take my tartan from wherever I can get it. I have no more problem with English woven tartan than I have with using American or Canadian, not Scottish kilt makers.


Further, purists say the weaving techniques at Marton Mills are different from those of the small Scottish boutique mills, and only the boutique tartan is “authentic'or “traditional.” If one studies the history of the kilt, it is seen that the kilt has evolved over the centuries. Weaving techniques also have changed over the centuries as well. Why is it, for example, that a modern kilt, in order to be considered traditional or authentic must be made of tartan woven using 18^th century techniques, even though the kilt is not made in an 18^th century style? As I said, I don't care where my tartan comes from, I have English, Canadian and Scottish woven in my collection. Nor do I care how the weaving is done. Probably 99.99% of observers would never see any difference, they don't even know there might be one, and of the .01% who might, from a polite distance even they won't be able to see it.


I hope this information will be useful to those considering a bespoke order of tartan. It's how I undertook this purchase. I consider it to be neither the right way nor the wrong way to go about it, but my way. How you choose to buy your tartan is your affair. Tell us about it here when you do, the curious rabble wants to know.

[Barb T]

Getting the right colors
Getting the colors that you want in a custom weave can be very straightforward, but it can also be a real challenge that can cost a bundle. Here are some thoughts on situations ranging from simple to difficult.

Simplest. If you already have a swatch of the tartan (maybe it was custom woven before or it’s a tartan that is no longer commercially woven or you want a different weight that is not woven commercially), send the swatch to the mill and ask how closely they can match it in both color and proportions. If the colors are standard, they’ll be able to match it pretty well. If there are some non-standard colors, they will likely send you some threads to choose from, but you’ll have a pretty good idea what the tartan will look like.

Moderately straightforward. For an existing tartan that is not commercially woven, you can do a tartan search on ScotWeb (http://www.scotweb.co.uk/) or Dalgliesh (http://www.dcdalgliesh.co.uk/custom) to see what the colors would look like for a particular tartan. On each of Dalgliesh’s tartan pages, the colors on the screen are presented in available Dalgliesh thread colors and are listed by specific color number (hover over the color dots to see the color number in the swatch window), and the sett size is listed under the “Specifications” tab. You can also choose to substitute colors for any of those in the sett (http://www.dcdalgliesh.co.uk/stock_yarns). I just did that with a custom weave of the Lunar tartan (geek moment – the original tartan design has both brown and gray in to “represent the rocks brought back from the Moon” – sorry folks, but virtually all lunar rocks and regolith are relentlessly light gray to dark gray, no brown, so I chose a different shade of gray to replace the brown…).

If you wanted to have a tartan woven by a mill other than Dalgliesh, you would need to contact the mill about the actual colors they can offer (as far as I know, no other mills show a listing of colors on line). If the colors are standard ones (e.g., navy blue, dark green, black, red, white, off-white, etc.), this is pretty straightforward. The same is true if you just want an Ancient or Weathered variant of a particular tartan, because the substitutions are pretty standard. If there are less common colors in the tartan, you should ask for thread options so that you can choose the one you want. Changing a yellow stripe, for example, from gold to cadmium yellow or mustard or yellow-orange can change the look of a tartan significantly, and you don’t want to be surprised.

You can also ask for a modification of the sett size. In the Lunar tartan example that I mentioned above, the sett size was listed as about 4" in the specifications. I asked Dalgliesh to weave it with an 8" sett instead. Just remember that setts can't be scaled to any size you want. For example, a sett with a 2-thread stripe can't be halved, because you can't have a one-thread stripe. And stripes are an even numbers of threads, so you couldn't multiply the sett by 1.5, because that would make that 2-thread stripe into a 3-thread stripe. Depending on the sett there can be some flexibility, but it's not as simple as scaling a tartan to any size in PhotoShop.

Most difficult. Realize that you can design a tartan using something like ScotWeb's online tartan designer and then not be able to find one (or even all!) of those exact colors available in weaving yarn at the mills who weave tartan. This is compounded by the fact that the colors on a computer monitor differ from monitor to monitor, and a color printout will be different still. And, a computer rendering of a tartan simply doesn’t look like a woven piece of fabric. Bottom line is that it is almost impossible to have a tartan woven that will look exactly like what you have as a computer rendition of a particular tartan.

If you have yet to design a tartan and you have chosen a mill already, you can save yourself a huge headache by asking them to send you threads in the color ranges you intend to use. If you plan to have Dalgliesh weave the tartan, you can use their stock yarn colors page to choose colors that can be woven by them (http://www.dcdalgliesh.co.uk/stock_yarns). Then do the best job you can to match the available yarn colors when you design your tartan.

If you have already designed a tartan that contains colors that are not standard (i.e., not navy blue, dark green, standard red, etc., etc.), you will likely need to shop around to several mills before you find a mill that has threads that match as closely as possible the colors you have in mind. Ask the mills to send you the range of threads they have in particular colors, and be sure to indicate what weight you want the tartan woven, because some mills carry different thread colors in different weight ranges. Then pick the mill that will weave the length, weight, and colors you need. You may have to make significant compromises, so be prepared.

If you really really really have to have a particular shade, you can always have the yarn custom-dyed. Expect to pay extra for each custom-dyed color unless you are ordering a lot of tartan from a big mill. The most difficult aspect of requesting a custom-dyed color is that it’s hard to specify exactly what you want. It’s relatively easy to choose between two thread samples but much harder to say “I’d like a gray that’s a little warmer/darker/bluer than Gray #60”. The mill will do their best to match a color printout, but the yarn will inevitably look different from what you see on the screen or a piece of paper.

[Alan H]

Our experience with designing and having the Wildcat Tartan woven is pretty well documented on XMTS. However, here's a breakdown...

Tartan Design

This period of time is variable, of course. You can do to one of the online tartan design applications and knock out something in an hour and go with it. If you have a committee of people putting together a tartan design, it can take quite a few weeks or months. Be aware that what you see on the computer screen is not necessarily what will be available from the mill, in stock colors.

Communication

Here on XMTS we get used to practically instantaneous communication. I know myself that I get antsy if I send an e-mail and I haven't heard back from someone in 48 hours. Well, forget that. Some mills, mostly the big ones, have marketing people who are devoted to communications with customers. Even then, the Locharron guy I was dealing with just STOPPED answering e-mail after 2-3 exchanges and I had to go to his boss to get him to return inquiries. At the smaller mills, the guy in charge may be on holiday for a few days, or off in London at a trade show, or who knows what. Just chill out. It's going to be slower than you think. Give everybody 4-5 days to respond to e-mail before asking them a second time.

Picking thread colors:

As McMurdo and I and Barb discovered (she probably knew this already) just because you use something called "Weavers Colors" on the usual website design tool does NOT mean that any given mill will have that exact color in stock. Most big mills can supply more-or-less any color but there may very well be surcharges for custom dyes. Please read Barbs post, above this one. Odds are strong that you will wind up picking a compromise between color and price.

The best way to go about it is to request thread samples from the mill. They'll be sent to you, but if you're in North America it may take a week or two to get them to your doorstep. It's likely that even with thread samples in hand, it will be difficult to judge the exact color. When you get close, you can request a graphic rendering from the mill. This is a computer-generated image of your tartan rendered in their thread colors...or the best approximation of those colors by the ink/web palette that they have. If you are really, really particular about the exact color, then be prepared to pay for custom dyes. If you are "auditioning" several mills, then consider that you may be requesting thread samples from more than one place and you may go back to the mill and request a different set of threads. They will look at the graphic image that you send then and pass along whatever colors seem to be the closest that they have in stock. If you want to look at more options, you might be waiting for several mills, and several trans-Atlantic thread sample mailings.

Yardage

Depending on the mill, there are minimum amounts. DC Dalgliesh I believe has an 8-10 yard minimum in single width. Marton Mills has something like an 11 yard minimum for double-width. Don't take my word for it, ASK THEM. However, the mills give price breaks at various lengths. For example, you'll find a price break / yard at around 35 yards, and another one at about 70 yards. The first run of the Scottish Wildcat Tartan was 92 yards.

It is VERY IMPORTANT when ordering larger amounts that you specify that you need at least a minimum of X number of yards. Some mills (one on the Isle of Bute) specialize in fabric for "furnishings"...meaning upholstery and so on. It appears that in that industry, when someone orders 200 yards, that's +/- as much as 5%. If you have an exact amount that you **MUST** have, then you absolutely need to tell the mill about that before ordering.

Delivery

It's going to take a couple of months for the tartan to arrive at your doorstep. The Scottish Wildcat Tartan was quoted to us at eight to ten weeks. They actually got it to us a week or two early, which was nice. Also, be aware of US Customs. The Import Tarriff for "cloth made from fine animal hair" for clothing is 24%. You'd better be ready to pay that. If you are totting up costs for a large run to be sent to a bunch of clan members, for example, you'd better include that 24%, or you run the very significant risk of getting stuck with a very large bill. The stinker is that you don't know for sure whether Customs will levy the charge, or not. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Total Time

For the Scottish Wildcat Tartan, the total time from a gleam in my eye to the day that the tartan arrived in bolts at my doorstep, ready to be cut was about 6 months. That's extremely fast. Part of why it was so fast was that I pestered my "committee"... McMurdo and Barb, mercilessly for months to move things along. This was to the point of being rather obnoxious!! I practically drove them nuts! Anyway, ranking where the time went, looks like this:

deciding on a design...voting, re-thinking designs and so on. -- Two months
color decisions...thread colors, threads being sent back and forth from three mills, etc. -- six weeks.
back-and forth with the mills over price...happened about the same time as the thread exchange --three-four weeks
wait time, once the order was sent --- two months

[Barb T]

I would add to Alan's post that I did most (but not all) of the back-and-forth with a number of mills, and I can say without hesitation that all were cheerful, speedy, and thoroughly professional in their replies. They were completely clear about what they could and could not do, and everyone I interacted with had procedures in place to insure that there would be no misunderstandings about what we as customers would receive.

Every time I have ordered a custom weave, regardless of whom it is from, there have been check points where I can see exactly what they think they are going to weave, and I can check that against what I want. This can be critical - at one point in the Scottish Wildcat process, an email page got left off when the sett was sent to the design room, and the computer drawdown that I received bore no resemblance to the sett that we wanted. It was a simple error that was easily fixed with one email, but I mention this to reassure those who are ordering a custom weave that there are stages in the process when you DO get to check that everything is OK before you commit to big bucks. And it certainly saves the company the expense, hassle, and bad publicity of a weave that has a blunder in. So, it's good for all concerned.

[Barb T]

Also - I will second Alan's observation that Customs duty is a hit-or-miss thing. You're best off figuring that the duty will be 24% when you budget your custom weave, and then, if you don't wind up being charged duty, just use it as mad money. This is a question of the difference between evading and avoiding. It's illegal to evade taxes by claiming that something is what it isn't. On the other hand, if US Customs decides that they will not charge you duty, you have avoided taxes, and that is not illegal. So, it's pretty much a matter of finger-crossing. But you SHOULD plan on paying duty.

[KD Burke]

I've ordered custom runs of fabric on (I think!) five occasions. On four of those, I could not have been happier. The fifth time I ended up paying a substantial amount for cloth that was not suitable for the purpose for which I had commissioned it. I was trying to duplicate a previous order. I went to the same mill that had produced the first lot, sent them a sample of the cloth I was trying to duplicate, and was explicit in my desire to match the colors as closely as possible.

It seems the mill had changes stock colors since my original run and the second run was in a palette significantly different from the first. Think of the difference between "Modern" and "Ancient" and that's similar to the result.

Had I been aware of this, I likely would have paid extra for custom dyeing, but the weaver didn't indicate that there would be any problem at all. Instead they surprised me with a new variation on the tartan that I had not considered, and frankly, didn't like.

The mill and I came to a mutually disagreeable settlement on the issue of payment.

The lesson, of course, is to ask questions. Even if you are certain that there is no doubt of your expectations, verify them!

[Barb T]

This is a good cautionary tale. Any mill will be happy to pop into the mail a twist of each of the available thread colors, plus reasonable alternates. So, you should always ask just to make sure that you and the mill are on the same page WRT colors.

I will also say that I learned many years ago from my photographer husband that two color photographs of the same scene, one taken with Kodachrome and the other with Ektachrome (which each had a different color balance, for those of you who don't remember the time of film cameras....), look equally great when looked at separately. But, put them together, and - whoa - they look really different from one another. Looked at side by side, you might very well like one better than the other, even though a minute ago, you thought they were both great when you looked at them separately.

I mention this because we had something of the same issue with the Wildcat tartan. We couldn't match the original tartan as designed on the computer, and we had to make some compromises on thread color. Put side by side, the paper printout of the original design and the finished tartan are quite a bit different. But, looked at by itself, each is fabulous. So, unless you are trying to match a previous length of tartan (as KD Burke was), get as close as you can with the colors, and then put away the computer printout and love your tartan.