What does this mean?

[ardchoille]

ardchoille, did you look at this one?

DWFII's thread "what am I seeing here?"

You know who's post to look for; it's the sixth post down.

Aha! Thank you Ted, this is very educational. This is also a good explanation of tuck in selvage:

Basically in a typical closed kilting selvedge, each thread is wrapped back around in the weaving and the thread is only cut when you are done with that color. So in terms of the Black Watch tartan pictured, each green section of the tartan is woven with one continuous green thread. Then you switch to black, blue, etc.

With the newer rapier looms each thread is cut and then tucked back up 1/2" or so into the fabric. So you still have a closed selvedge suitable for kilting, but the the bottom 1/2" of the cloth will be a bit thicker, and in the heavy weight cloths especially, this is more noticable. The better mills, such as Lochcarron, take great care in the way the tartan is laid out so that this difference in thickness will correspond with a line in the tartan that "masks" the difference visually. I've seen cloth where this has not been done well (for instance, search the archives for some of the feedback on past runs of the X Marks tartan from Fraser & Kirkbright).

This type of selvedge is becoming more and more common in the tartan industry as older looms break down, and are being replaced with rapier looms.

And as a final note, one side of the fabric will typically be "cleaner" than the other in terms of how the type of selvedge looks. It is important that the kiltmaker use the good face of the cloth for the outside of the kilt. I would guess that the picture in the first post is the "bad" side of the fabric, so hopefully this was on the inside of the kilt.

M

It is my opinion that the tuck-in selvedge looks better than the traditional closed selvedge.

I really enjoy reading posts by the kiltmakers