From Coat of Arms to Tartan: The Cadilhac Case.

[cadilhac]

An interesting matter indeed! I haven't made my mind yet on whether this would be pleated to the sett or to the stripe; you believe one is not an option with an asymmetrical tartan? I plan to order the fabric from Scotsweb, getting 4 yards of it (which I assume is double-width, for a total of 8yards, but I may be mistaken), and depending on the heaviness of the material, wing the amount of pleats, and decide then what looks best. Do you have any advice on that?
Thanks!

Cheers;
M.

[figheadair]

@figheadair: Yeah, K2 Y2 is a crowded patch indeed, you are definitely right. I really like what you did with the colors too, that's definitely inspiring! Thanks very much! You say that the initial K2 of this sequence would be "lost in the mix"; is that to say that one won't see it, or that it unnecessarily loads the pattern?

Basically, you won't see it, so why have it.

An interesting matter indeed! I haven't made my mind yet on whether this would be pleated to the sett or to the stripe; you believe one is not an option with an asymmetrical tartan? I plan to order the fabric from Scotsweb, getting 4 yards of it (which I assume is double-width, for a total of 8yards, but I may be mistaken), and depending on the heaviness of the material, wing the amount of pleats, and decide then what looks best. Do you have any advice on that?

I'm not sure I understand the comment about an asymmetric sett but it's definitely possible to pleat to sett as this example of Glenorchy shows.


Scotweb's (via D. C. Dalgliesh) minimum order is 8yds single width. If you want double width you'll need to order more.

[cadilhac]

Scotweb's (via D. C. Dalgliesh) minimum order is 8yds single width. If you want double width you'll need to order more.

Ah! From their website, I read that the minimum order is 4 meters, so I guess this is double width? Thanks for the great example for the asymmetrical sett pleat!
@OC Richard: Well, my face is not all that symmetrical, so I guess it's a good fit :-D

[Macman]

Ah! From their website, I read that the minimum order is 4 meters, so I guess this is double width? Thanks for the great example for the asymmetrical sett pleat!
@OC Richard: Well, my face is not all that symmetrical, so I guess it's a good fit :-D

I know that you're the kiltmaker, and I'm certainly not, but isn't there a problem with double-width material and asymmetrical setts? Do you not have to cut the material, and then to keep the selvedge when you join the two pieces, the sett gets reversed?

[Todd Bradshaw]

I think he's right on that one. It would make an interesting design challenge that's probably best avoided.

Todd: Thanks so much for that preview, mighty great stuff! Is there a tool online for that?

As expensive as custom tartans are, I like to arm myself with as much info as possible before opening my wallet. First I open the tartan designer's preview in Photoshop and splice a whole bunch of them together to get a good idea of what a hunk maybe 24" square or so would look like. It's often a very different look from what the small preview showed - sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Then I have a Photoshop file I made that has everything in different layers to make the kilt cartoons. I can take the extended tartan preview that I made and plug it in as the new tartan layer. It's a concept cartoon, not a rendering - but it's certainly a lot better than just trying to picture the final product in my mind and hope for the best.

[figheadair]

I know that you're the kiltmaker, and I'm certainly not, but isn't there a problem with double-width material and asymmetrical setts? Do you not have to cut the material, and then to keep the selvedge when you join the two pieces, the sett gets reversed?

There's only an issue with double width materail and an asymmetric sett if one tries to make an 8 yd (or 5-6 yd) kilt with half the length of the material required. The simple solution is to find someone else who wants the materail too, cut it in half horizontallly which will give two lengths of single width cloth.

[cadilhac]

Thanks very much for bringing that up! This could have been a bad surprise indeed, as my feeble mind couldn't picture that in advance I got in touch with Scotweb, and they told me that the fabric is single-width, so it's not a problem at the end :-)

Again, thanks for all the amazing feedback, that really helped me have a clearer idea, and the design is now slightly changed as per the advice of @OC Richard:



Cheers!

[Tarheel]

[QUOTE=figheadair;1319703]I'm not sure I understand the comment about an asymmetric sett but it's definitely possible to pleat to sett as this example of Glenorchy shows.
QUOTE]

I have again gained from the experienced and learned members. The kilt pictured (pleated to the sett) appears to be pleated to the stripe to my quick glance. My knowledge grows the more I explore. I find this is a pleasant sensation.

[figheadair]

[QUOTE=Tarheel;1319711]

I have again gained from the experienced and learned members. The kilt pictured (pleated to the sett) appears to be pleated to the stripe to my quick glance. My knowledge grows the more I explore. I find this is a pleasant sensation.

Appearances can be deceptive. This one is defnitely pleated to sett.

[OC Richard]

In general I'm not a big fan of asymmetrical tartans. I know, I know... they've been around for centuries, but they just don't "look like tartan" to me. For sure symmetrical tartan designs are inherently stronger, as is anything with a symmetrical design, such as the vast majority of corporate logos, cars, the human face, and so on.