Remembering a tartan 40 years later, Part 2

[OC Richard]

(The original thread is locked and the photos have disappeared into the Photobucket abyss, so...)

It was 1975 and I had just got my first set of pipes. Best Day Ever!

Now I needed my first kilt. But I had only once seen a kilt in person, and didn't know anywhere I could get one. This in the pre-internet days, mind you. So in our hillbilly make-do way I went down to the local fabric shop and bought a length of a passably tartanlike wool. I liked the colours; we were living in the desert and the tartan was mostly tan and blue which I thought was suitable for the desert sand and sky.

My grandmother made the kilt. She had never seen one, and we were mostly guessing as to how they were made.

I wore this kilt only for a year or two, and I have no idea what became of it.

A few years ago, around the 40th anniversary of getting that first kilt, I was trying to remember what that tartan looked like. I couldn't find a single photo of it.

Here's what I came up with from memory, having not seen that tartan for nearly 40 years:



I remembered a tan background, wide Royal Blue stripes, and smaller stripes of black, red, and white.

Then recently I came across a trove of old family slides, and in it were a couple photos of me wearing that kilt!

They're the earliest photos I have of me kilted or piping:





From that I've been able to come up with a more accurate reconstruction. Interesting that I remembered the little black/white/black motif! But completely misremembered where the red occurred.



In the earlier thread someone pointed out the similarity of this "fashion tartan" to a version of Royal Stewart with a tan background and blue motif, called "navy Stewart" or "Royal Stewart, navy".

Here's a fellow XMarker wearing his navy Stewart kilt

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...stewart-18313/