Do Your Research (aka Buyer Beware)

[M. A. C. Newsome]

If somebody made the point before, I missed it:

With a custom weave, you can't order a swatch, which makes things even more risky.

Bingo.

I will occasionally get people asking for a sample swatch of a custom tartan before it is run. The minimum amount for a custom tartan to be woven is four yards. That's the minimum. So if you want a sample swatch, it will be four yards long. :-)

What we can do is send thread samples first, but this is not as useful as you might imagine. Unless you have a really good eye for color and some experience with how colors come together in a tartan, most people would be hard pressed to envision what a woven tartan would look like, with it's half-tones and color combinations, from looking at a few bundles of twisted thread.