My bolt of bespoke poly/viscose tartan arrived today. This is the Marton Mills "Balmoral" fabric. It's 65% polyester / 35% viscose, and I'd say it's the equivalent of 10-11 oz. It's about 62" wide, no selvedge edge, and the bolt you see here is about 65 yards of material. I first contacted Marton Mills on Nov. 24. I had a quote by Nov. 30, and CADs (electronically) on Dec. 9. The snail-mail cads and thread samples followed a few days later, and I gave the go-ahead to produce on Dec. 17. There was a bit of a delay with the billing because the first invoice went astray and then my bank decided that there was no way I would ever, ever be charging something to my Visa card in England while I was in Fresno, even after I called them to give them a heads-up about the purchase (a routine that was repeated with the final payment, and ended up with me switching to American Express after they declined the transaction three times). I paid the 50% deposit on Jan. 8. I got the notice that the bolt had been completed on Feb. 24, and after the back-and-forth trying to get my Visa card to work (again), they shipped on March 2. UPS attempted to deliver on March 5 (much faster than I expected), but there were some duties due that required a cashier's check to pay, so I wasn't able to collect it until today. I found everyone at Marton Mills very pleasant to work with, and will definitely be going back there if/when I need to produce more. The material itself appears to be of very good quality, though I haven't worked with it yet. I suspect it's going to be on the lightweight side of the spectrum for kiltmaking, but kilts are far from the only project I'm going to be attempting. I'll let everyone know how the various projects turn out.
That's a very nice tartan. I've also found the folks at MM very nice to deal with on bespoke weaving jobs.... and the credit card companies equally annoying.
KyleAisteach
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