How do you go about it as a potential mill customer?

[AustinDiver]

I have a tank that was hand sewn. The cloth was from Dalgliesh. I wanted another kilt to match the first. Clan.com was sort of a pain. They messed up the weaving. They scaled the registered personal tartan differently than the original weaving. The kilts did not match. They did not ask for approval before hand.

Kinloch Anderson asks a lot of money and pushes you towards double wide weaves even when asking about options for single width (House of Edgar). The prices they quoted me today were for double wide Lochcarron. I am not knocking Lochcarron. The original inquiry was for single width options from House of Edgar.

If you are making a kilt, LochCaron will work with you. They have their own kilt makers on staff.

If I go through with this, I would rather not deal with clan.com again for custom kilts. They contract the kilt making out possibly to McNaughton or St Kilda.

Gordon Nicholson will not work with Dalgliesh. If I order the cloth and have it delivered, Nicholson would made the kilt at one point.

St Kildas helped me with a weave in PolyViscose from Marton Mills. I wanted some cloth for a few kilts so that I did not put wear on the 16 oz Tank. Marton Mills sent the cloth for the kilts to St Kildas and sent the rest to me for making table runners, etc.

I would be willing to give Andrew Elliot a try. Since I have the PVS kilts in the pattern, the perceived need is not as strong. The tank would be used for formal and the PVS could be used for more casual/less formal.


One thing to keep in mind is that none of these companies are huge by any stretch of the imagination. I saw some sales numbers of Lochcarron and I was surprised.

[bookish]

I ended up going with Marton Mills as a customer, and the process was not too difficult. I was probably a little headstrong in wanting to have custom-dyed yarns, and at the cost of nearly £7/meter per thread color, I opted to go with stock colored yarn.

My initial contact with the mill was to get the price list. That was in March of this year. After I saved up a certain amount of money, I decided to engage the mill to do the weaving in late June. After I confirmed that I wanted to start the process I was contacted by someone from the design team. I let them know the colors that I had in mind (having designed the tartan with a Pantone palette), and in turn, I received a digital mockup of the tartan with the suggested yarn colors from stock that the designer felt closely resembled the Pantone colors. I requested a physical printout and yarn swizzle samples. I spent about a week with the samples, comparing the options with the Pantone swatches that I had on hand. During this time, I considered the cost/value proposition for custom-dyed yarns. The red of my design was the color that I wrestled with the most. I had the option of a maroon, and a couple of adjacent reds. I took the colors out into the sun, I looked at them in indirect natural light, and in artificial light. I thought that the maroon was closer in hue, but darker in value, and that one of the reds was the right value, but the hue was just a little warmer. I also played with the yellow options quite a bit, one yellow was closer in hue, but darker in value. In the end, I chose the red over the maroon, and a yellow that was closer in value to the light blue. One of the things about tartan that is interesting, is that the sett is a set of instructions that has to be interpreted and negotiated. A color can be pushed around and manipulated by other colors (look up Josef Albers if you haven't considered the intricacies of color and design). I made my selections in early August.

After I made my choice, the order was finalized and I put down half the estimated cost in payment up front. The weaving was due to commence in late October, but began earlier this month. I made my second pay installment when weaving was about to commence, and I received my tartan yesterday.

I am happy with the finished product. I do think the red is trying to dominate its peers, but I did make design choices in the tartan that would naturally result in the red standing out a bit (like being bordered on one side by a light blue). That conflict does create some visual interest (in my mind). At an intermediate distance I think the overall effect is balanced, and at a distance the 4 colors blend together in the eye to create a prismatic effect with subtle pop of lightness when the warp and weft meet as a 4 color check square with elements separated by white lines.

As for the quality of the tartan cloth itself, I am quite pleased. It is heavy, crisp wool in 16oz. It is the fourth example of tartan that I have, and my favorite (probably due to the amount of time and effort as much as the quality of the wool fabric). I ripped off a 5 yard piece to play with, trying my hand at donning the great kilt, but that will likely end up as something (or a couple) somethings else. I'll be practicing some stitching on a sample piece in preparation for making my first kilt.

I am working on a commemorative tartan design for my friends, so perhaps I will have the opportunity to gain more experience in the near future. I can't seem to insert the images that I have (they may be too large), but I'll try to troubleshoot and post a couple of images here in the near future.

[bookish]

Learning new things. Attaching properly-sized images of the tartan, printed example from Marton Mills, yarn twizzles, and Pantone color samples.