Quote Originally Posted by The Wizard of BC View Post
Today, this type of weaving is becoming the industry standard. Even the very high quality weaving mills are using this type of selvedge. Lochcarron now uses it as does much of D.C. Daglish and Strathmore.
So don't worry, it is normal.[/SIZE][/FONT]
Yes and no. What Is pictured in this cloth is fairly typical of cloth woven on a rapier loom. I find it to be most common on cloth from Fraser & Kirkbright and Lochcarron. I can specifically say that you do NOT see it on cloth from D. C. Dalgleish and House of Edgar. Strathmore I can honestly say I can't recall off the top of my head, because I don't work with their cloth all that frequently.

Basically in a typical closed kilting selvedge, each thread is wrapped back around in the weaving and the thread is only cut when you are done with that color. So in terms of the Black Watch tartan pictured, each green section of the tartan is woven with one continuous green thread. Then you switch to black, blue, etc.

With the newer rapier looms each thread is cut and then tucked back up 1/2" or so into the fabric. So you still have a closed selvedge suitable for kilting, but the the bottom 1/2" of the cloth will be a bit thicker, and in the heavy weight cloths especially, this is more noticable. The better mills, such as Lochcarron, take great care in the way the tartan is laid out so that this difference in thickness will correspond with a line in the tartan that "masks" the difference visually. I've seen cloth where this has not been done well (for instance, search the archives for some of the feedback on past runs of the X Marks tartan from Fraser & Kirkbright).

This type of selvedge is becoming more and more common in the tartan industry as older looms break down, and are being replaced with rapier looms.

House of Edgar recently invested a lot of capital (I imagine) in new, custom designed looms for their facilities so that they could continue to produce tartan cloth with a traditional clean kilting selvedge. Dalgleish, as far as I know, still uses very old looms, which is why you don't see this in their selvedge, either.

And as a final note, one side of the fabric will typically be "cleaner" than the other in terms of how the type of selvedge looks. It is important that the kiltmaker use the good face of the cloth for the outside of the kilt. I would guess that the picture in the first post is the "bad" side of the fabric, so hopefully this was on the inside of the kilt.

M