Eternity tartan appears to be mostly charcoal gray. It's an illusion. The gray area is actually a micro tweed created by twisting together a bit of black yarn and light gray yarn, which when woven give the overall charcoal appearance. Everyone who has seen the Eternity fabric I'm working with loves it. Everybody says there's something about it they can't quite describe, that really appeals to them. I think it is the almost undetectable tweediness. The fabric almost looks alive at times depending on how light strikes the surface.


This has made me wonder how many other colors could be created by twisting together yarns of two colors. Brown should work; a very dark brown twisted with an ecru, perhaps, should make a nice medium brown appearing tartan. The same could be done with blues and greens and so forth.

Then I got to wondering what would happen if say the gray of Eternity were woven with the tweed strands twisted to the right for the warp, and to the left for the woof. The black-on-black tartans are woven using yarns twisted in opposite directions to create the tartan effect. Could a micro tweed be made to look even more alive if woven with yarns twisted in opposite directions?

What would one have to do to test the idea -- commission an very expensive custom weave, or are there other ways to previsualize the possible effects.

Do you know of any other tartans woven like Eternity with multicolored yarns creating the illusion of a third color?