Designing a tartan and need help

[piperdbh]

How about this, using your colors? I made it on tartanweb.org

[Gryphon noir]

Having gone through the process myself--ie, starting out with zero knowledge on the subject--I should advise you that your project will take some time, so it's worthwhile not to jump to a bunch of conclusions too soon. I would suggest taking the "anything is negotiable" point of view, and allowing it to take on a life of its own.

The problems I see with your initial design are:

(1) the sett is much too big. If you're designing a family tartan, think about what you want to use it for. Ask a kiltmaker or two what problems they would encounter with a large sett, and you'll probably conclude that you need to rethink some aspect of the design.

(2) too many colours. Not only does it increase the difficulty of weaving the pattern, it is also even more challenging for the kiltmaker to decide what to emphasize when pleating.

There are a number of good tartan weaving sites, and I would suggest that you to try them all out, and see which one you feel most comfortable with. It took me about 50 variants to arrive at a thread count and colour scheme I liked--and even then, the weaver had a couple of truly brilliant insights I hadn't thought of.

Most important: keep an open mind, and have fun with it!

[The_PreacherMan]

Howdy all!

I started completely over. I also talked to my family to get some ideas cleared up. I realize that the 'making up symbolism' thing isn't popular with some people, but that's how we want to do it. We picked the three most important things to us, and assigned colors to them:

God = three royal purple stripes
Family = red for blood, gold for worth
the land we live on = brown for the farm, green for the forest

Then I looked up a few other tartans, saw what they did for interesting effects and quickly threw something together in the scotweb generator. Here is the result:



Just one of many ideas that I could try (and I plan to try more of them). You think this type of idea is an improvement? The pattern IS completely negotiable, as long as we have 3x-purple, red/gold, and green/brown. I'm not even particularly fond of this one at the moment; everything being evenly laid out makes everything square and geometric looking. But then this was just an example of a new thought.

Thank you all for the ideas! You guys are great. =D

Z.D.

[Guinness>water]

Now your cooking! I really like the meaning behind the colors and number of stripes. Just keep changing things around until you find that you keep creating the same one over and over, thats the one you want. I dont know about set size, I've often wondered if kilt makes prefer a large set (8") or a smaller set (6"). I kinda like the smaller sets myself.
Good luck!

Try something like this


it is exactly 8"

[TimButterfield]

...<snip>...
The pattern IS completely negotiable, as long as we have 3x-purple, red/gold, and green/brown.

Does the white have significance? I ask because it seems the predominant color, but is not listed in your rules.

I notice you are from Washington State. Here is a variation on that tartan I just now made up. It uses the same sizing as the Washington state tartan, but with the colors swapped to match your rules. I created it with the Croft Weaver web page. You can enable advanced colors and enter the pattern using Advancd/Edit in threadcount notation. Here is the pattern: DY/6 SR6 T32 G64 DP6 G6 DP/6

This is just to illustrate using an existing pattern with similar lines, but then swapping the colors. If you register (free) at The Scottish Register of Tartans, you can get the threadcounts of registered tartans to use as a base for tweaking the colors and sizes. That is how I got the base pattern for this one. Keep in mind that the color names/abbreviations may not match exactly, but it should get you close. I'm not sure if there are any 'rules' against doing this. Perhaps other can comment if there are.

[The_PreacherMan]

That's a good idea. Here's a new one with no background color:



It's still a little simple looking... but then I guess things don't HAVE to be ornate...

[TimButterfield]

Here are some more things to keep in mind. On the tartan registry site I linked to, the threadcount information includes color descriptions that include a hexadecimal color value. For example, in the Washington State tartan, the white is defined as WW=F8F8F8WILSON WHITE. The F8F8F8 is the HEX color value. You can find similar HEX values in the HTML colors on a site like W3Schools. If you make a screen capture of the pattern, you may be able to use the eyedropper tool of some graphics programs to determine the specific color HEX values.

The reason I mention colors and HEX values is that our monitors do not all display them the same. Photographers often have to do color corrections and profile their monitors and printers and even the paper to make sure the output matches their expectations. Once you get close to a final design, it may be helpful to identify the HEX values of your colors and have someone with a calibrated monitor and printer to print a large size sample for you, repeating the pattern to fill in something like a 13x19 size print of your pattern at near actual size. Doing this may allow you to get a sense of the look of the fabric before investing in a custom run at a mill. If you could find the HEX values for the colors used by the mill, it would help you get even closer. (Are such color values available?)

Of course, I am a newbie at this also and there may other, more efficient ways to 'proof' a tartan pattern before investing in the custom run. If there are, I would love to hear them.