An X Marks tartan

[Thistle Stop]

I'm sure that the idea has come up, but I'm going to pitch it again.

Expense, it's thought, is too great. OK, I'm going going to swing from the hip, here and let's talk about expense. I fully admit that I know next to nothing, but here goes.

1. Tartan Design: our very own Thistle Stop Lady, Cydni is a tartan designer. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts there are some other folks here who can do this as well. Cyndi, what would you charge to design an X Marks tartan?

I wouldn't charge anything for doing the design, as long as everyone involved promised not to get into any arguments about it -- note that I didn't say 'discussions', which are fine. I just don't want anybody to get mad at me! When you have a lot of people involved in designing something, it's hard to get everyone to agree on the final form it will take. But in the end, when you hire a designer, you have to trust their taste enough to allow the designer to make the ultimate aesthetic decisions. My style is to get a lot of input from the person or group commissioning the tartan, which I use as a base for the concepts behind the tartan, and then give them 3 designs to choose from.

2. Getting a sample, or a few yards woven:

http://www.tartanweaver.com/

It doesn't HAVE to be 200 yards of 16 ounce material from a custom Scottish mill for the first run. I think Molly V. Manaugh could probably whip up a few yards of a lightweight tartan that would be just excellent for ties and things without breaking the bank. If she knew she was going to get orders for fifteen ties I bet she'd do it. I bet she'd think it was a really nifty project. I bet she's not the only small weaver around that can do this, as well.

I think having an X Marks tartan tie would be a riot, and I'd buy one, for darned sure.

You need about a metre, give or take, of tartan for the registration (that is, if I designed it -- I keep half for my portfolio and give half to the Scottish Tartans Authority for the registration, which requires submission of a woven sample).

I strongly advise having whatever is woven made from worsted wool, rather than saxony or a blended or manmade fabric. It wouldn't cost that much more and the quality is infinitely better. However, you can't make a tie and a kilt from the same fabric. The tartan for a tie needs to be smaller in scale (so you can see the pattern), and light enough to be flexible and drapey so you can tie it. It's usually a plain weave rather than twill, and a very light weight (9 oz. or less). Tartan for a kilt needs to have weight and body (2-over-2 twill, 13 oz. or more). A 13-oz. worsted, or 11 oz. at the very least, would allow for making ladies' sashes as well as kilts, and that's what I'd recommend getting, unless you want to get a lightweight fabric first and kilting tartan sometime later, as separate weaving jobs.

3. Registering the tartan.

Um. Just to be problematic here, thinking outside the box and all (after all, we ARE kilt-wearers) why do we HAVE to register the tartan, at least for now?

Registering the tartan is the cheapest part of the whole deal. It's worth doing. I get the member's discount, so it would only be £75.00 (about $145.00 USD) and possibly I could get it for £50.00 (about $95.00 USD) by registering it as a 'Personal' rather than a 'Corporate' tartan. I think Brian would let me do that.

4. Now, getting 25-plus yards of commerical-weight tartan woven is not cheap, but if I remember rightly, Bear has some connections with a local weaver in Vancouver. His "Celtic Pride" tartan is made by this weaver. I've no doubt that USA K and Barb and M.A.C Newsome also have connections like this. In fact I know that M.A.C. does.

Now, WHAT IF three-four people committed to buying kilts from one or more of these folks? We're not talking about getting Locharron to run off 100 yards of it, OK? We're talking about a small local mill or maybe even a handweaver with a big loom who wants to bite of a big project doing 4 x 5 yards of it. If people really need to trim the budget then the mill might be able to run a wool/poly blend rather than 100% wool. I don't know, I know precisely nothing about weaving.

For example, M.A.C. Newsome charges $65 a yard for a custom tartan weave. That's for a mediumweight 100% wool tartan. That's not cheap but that's what you pay for Locharron and other Scottish wools, so it seems reasonable to me. WHAT IF a wool/poly blend were more like $30 a yard retail?

...Then getting 20 yards of the stuff for 4 "casual" kilts is a little closer to reasonable, eh? MAYBE, just MAYBE someone like USA Kilts or Bear would turn out a machine-sewn (not hand-sewn) philabeg (or their similar product) for you for $100 plus the cost of the material (4 yards at $30 a yard makes $120) and you'd have a wool blend, totally unique 4 yard casual kilt for roughly $220.

Or maybe folks would want the 100% wool product, handsewn. Bear or Barb or M.A.C. Newsome would be entirely delighted to make a kilt like that for a customer, I'm sure. It'd cost quite a bit more than the "casual kilt" for sure, but it could be done.

OK, discuss amongst yourselves. Like I said, I'm shooting from the hip, here, but $2,000 to crank out a few yards of wool in a new tartan seems whacko to me.

The minimum yardage most of the Scottish tartan mills will do at a decent price is 30 yards. But small, independent weavers will often do less. The problem in finding a small weaver who can produce real tartan is that the loom required is a bit specialised, so not every hobbyist weaver can make it on their own loom, even if they want to learn. Weaving it properly is quite an art, too. So you do need someone who is capable and experienced with tartan, at the very least.

Most kiltmakers have a price for making a kilt with the customer's own fabric, which is naturally cheaper than if you are buying the kilt and the fabric together from the kiltmaker.

The hardest part of such a project would be deciding what kind of fabric is wanted and how much of each kind, if more than one sort of fabric. There are minimums with the big weaving houses, and usually maximums with the small weavers. So lining up one or more weavers to produce it goes hand-in-hand with deciding on a fabric and a quanitity.