Canadian kilts, home woven tartan or Scottish?

[piper909]

I'm curious where Canadian Highland outfitters and Canadian military units get their tartan material from. Is it produced locally, or do they go to the established Scottish mills for it?

[The Wizard of BC]

As kiltmaker to The Canadian Scottish Regt. and also to 5 other bands/groups I can tell you that I use readily available fabrics woven in the UK. Not all within Scotland

I'm sorry but there are no longer any weaving firms in Canada that produce kilt quality and weight Tartan fabric. There is one that weaves very light weight stuff for girls school skirts and one that weaves a pajama pant like poly/cotton blend fabric for the fashion industry. But if you want kilt quality woven fabrics with kilt selvedges and 13 or 16 ounce fabric you must get it from one of the UK firms.

I guess you could also contact a hand weaver and commission some woven but I doubt that would not be a cost effective option.

[piper909]

Ah, thanks for the insight! I was hoping one of the Canadian outfitters would weigh in to answer this.

Interesting! You'd think there would be a demand for locally supplied tartan in kilt-quality weaves. I'm a bit surprised that cloth still has to be imported. But perhaps setting up a mill is too expensive a proposition these days. I don't expect any kilt tartan is produced in the USA either, then. Or Australia or New Zealand?

[The Wizard of BC]

Well, as I am located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada i guess I would count as "A Canadian Outfitter".

Although I consider myself a custom kiltmaker and not a Highland Outfitter.

[OC Richard]

Makes me wonder when the last Canadian mill producing kilting cloth shut down.

Because back in the 1980s our band here in California decided to go with British Columbia tartan. We did some asking around, and were told that the kilt-weight fabric was locally woven there in BC.

Our sources in Scotland, Lochcarron and HOE, didn't offer it in kilt weight. Lochcarron wove it in the lightweight stuff for neckties only. So we ordered a bolt of it in 13oz to be woven to order by Lochcarron.

But somebody was weaving it back then, because we saw a number of BC pipe bands wearing it.

[The Wizard of BC]

The mill you are referring to is probably Fraser & Kirkbright. It was located in E. Vancouver, BC.
This weaving mill was run by Gordon Kirkbright and you may remember that he wove the first and second runs of the X Marks Tartan.
Gordan is a great guy and fought to the last to keep his mill operating. Unfortunately the space is now a brew pub. Gordon is still around and you can find him running FK fabrics on the web although he is now the N. American rep for another weaver.

My IOS kilt is made from Fraser & Kirkbright fabric as is my current, old ratty X Marks kilt. I still have some Tara/Murphy fabric woven by Gordon.
Gordon used almost exclusively Australian Merino wool so his fabrics had a wonderful hand.

You may also remember that while Gordon had weaving looms he did not have the finishing capability in house. He had to ship all the fabric he wove to a finishing mill in Eastern Canada. After finishing the fabric was shipped again all the way across the continent back to Vancouver.
It was this finishing mill that destroyed an entire run of the X Marks fabric which we documented here with pics of the huge tears in the selvedge and large grease stains.