Need help identifying the maker of this fabric - City of Dundee Ancient tartan

[PiperChick]

Hello! My pipe band is wanting to adopt this tartan as ours for kilts, and we're having considerable difficulty. The shades of the colors seem to be the sticking point, as there are weavers who do this tartan in brighter shades. We have a swatch of what we want, but don't know where is hales from. We believe it is the City of Dundee Ancient, except a narrow yellow stripe has been replaced with orange. Anyone have any idea who may have woven this? Any help would be greatly appreciated! IMG_6055.jpg

[Todd Bradshaw]

I've had good luck with both the folks at Dalgliesh and those at Marton Mills in getting yarn samples mailed to me prior to ordering custom tartans. I suspect the other weavers probably will do the same. Since you actually have a hunk of what you want, I'd be tempted to reverse-engineer the process - ravel-out some yarns, mail them to a weaver and ask how close they can come to what you want with the yarns they use. This is the type of samples they send out. You would just need to send similar ones or a small sample of the tartan. No good tartan is cheap, but I haven't found custom woven yardage to be that much more expensive than stock tartans, and it's nice to get exactly what you want. Once you figure out which mills have the proper colors you can choose one to do your weaving. Once the details were nailed down and my deposit mailed, my last one arrived from Marton Mills just about a month later.

[MacGumerait]

PiperChick ,

It would seem the swatch you have is an 8 oz tartan fabric woven by Ingles Buchan and is identified as " Dundee City " tartan . Unfortunately the 8 oz fabric is not really meant for kilts .



Here's a link : https://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartan/Dundee-City-/15673

However , there is an actual " Dundee City ( Ancient Colors ) " tartan in a 16 oz fabric which is a wee bit different than the picture that you posted . It is woven by DC Dalgliesh .



Here's the link to this one : https://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartan/Dun...olours-/452389


Hope this helps .

Cheers , Mike

[davidlpope]

Hello! My pipe band is wanting to adopt this tartan as ours for kilts, and we're having considerable difficulty. The shades of the colors seem to be the sticking point, as there are weavers who do this tartan in brighter shades. We have a swatch of what we want, but don't know where is hales from. We believe it is the City of Dundee Ancient, except a narrow yellow stripe has been replaced with orange. Anyone have any idea who may have woven this? Any help would be greatly appreciated! IMG_6055.jpg

It looks very similar to Lochcarron's colors. I have a heavyweight swatch of this from LC and it seems very similar, particularly the ancient red, blue, green, and purple. LC's shades vary between their 11oz., 13oz., and 16oz., fabric, so make sure that you are comparing apples to apples. For example, LC's yellow in their 11oz. cloth is gold, while their 13oz. and 16oz. fabrics use a bright yellow.

If your sample is very lightweight tartan, it might be woven by Ingles-Buchan. They don't weave kilt weight, though, so you may be out of luck. See here:http://www.thescottishweaver.com/woo...l#.VnAwRE3lvcc

If you're bound and determined to have a perfect match Dalgliesh or Robin Elliot would be my turn-to's.

[KD Burke]

If you plan to kit out an entire band, then having a custom weave done might actually not cost much more than buying stock. I'd suspect that with an order of 40 yards or so, the cost per yard could be quite competitive.

[figheadair]

If you plan to kit out an entire band, then having a custom weave done might actually not cost much more than buying stock. I'd suspect that with an order of 40 yards or so, the cost per yard could be quite competitive.

Indeed, at that sort of length you should be able to argue for the trade price from which ever weaver you go to.

[Barb T]

And, for a custom weave, threads can be dyed to match perfectly.

The down side to a custom weave from a band perspective is that you will inevitably need more kilts in the future. But I'm sure you've thought of that already!

[PiperChick]

Thank you for your help, everyone. I've emailed Marton Mills about the possibility of a custom job, and will hopefully hear from them soon.

My pipe major (and his mom) fell in love with an 8 oz scarf of a tartan we had long planned to use for our band. I had obtained a sample of Lochcarron's version of the tartan over a year ago, but the colors were not to his liking, as they are quite bright, and he much preferred a more muted look. He made an attempt at having the tartan woven by someone that did not specialize in this, and the sample they provided was, well, to be blunt... a disaster. (And I'm trying to be nice enough not to say "I told you so" more often than necessary :-) ) I've now been enlisted to explore our other options. I'll update as this saga continues, lol. Your help is much appreciated!