Herringbone tweed question.

[Jolyon Wagg]

Hello all,

I'm planning on having a tweed kilt made, and have discovered that the cheapest way is likely to be to source the material and the kiltmaker separately, and then put them together. I have a question about herringbone tweed, and wondered if any resident experts might help...

For an 8yd kilt, I presume I need 4yds of double width tweed. But! The direction of the 'arrow' of the herringbone runs down the length of the roll of cloth, meaning that if the 4yds is split into two, both lengths will have the arrow running in the direction of the long edge. This in turn means that the herringbone arrow would have to run horizontally across the kilt when made.

Is there any way to ensure, instead, that the arrow can run vertically down the kilt? I've seen beautiful tweed kilts on this site where this is achieved, but what's the geometry involved in the source fabric?

Thanks!

[RB51]

Sorry, I've never worked with herringbone so can't help you there, but welcome to Xmarks!

[sydnie7]

It's a relatively simple matter of building the kilt from lengths of fabric that have been cut at a 90 degree angle to the selvedge. Your kilt will have to be hemmed, but it is unlikely that your tweed fabric would have a good kilting selvedge anyway. You will also have more seams as the kilt will incorporate multiple, shorter pieces of fabric but those seams are buried inside pleats. Hope this makes sense!

[Tarheel]

Thinking through sydnie7's idea of cutting the strips of fabric at 90 degrees seems to make sense to me. Sewing the strips back together (so the "arrows" will run horizontally) would be achieved, by theory. I wonder if this process would work on a box pleat, or would the seams (hidden as sydnie7 suggested) be seen?
It's obvious I need to get Barb's book and learn something.

[Jolyon Wagg]

Wow, thanks for the speedy responses everyone. So, with a double-width tweed, that's going to have to be 4 or 5 pieces sewn together. That makes sense, of course - is this quite a standard way of doing things?

[sydnie7]

Wow, thanks for the speedy responses everyone. So, with a double-width tweed, that's going to have to be 4 or 5 pieces sewn together. That makes sense, of course - is this quite a standard way of doing things?

"Standard" if you are using some types of non-standard kilt material. For example, digital camo needs to be handled this way for the pattern to be correctly oriented. And I've done it with denim, so that the direction of stretch is from waist-to-hem in finished garment.

[The Wizard of BC]

If I'm not mistaken the Herringbone pattern is not "arrows" but alternating bands where the twill lines are reversed. There should be no up or down to Herringbone.

[Tarheel]

Here are photos of Herringbone turned 90 degrees to show the pattern differences. The appearance of arrows is seen.

[IsaacW]

The biggest issue I see is the selvedge. I have seen few tweeds that have a kiltworthy selvedge and hems can be a bear on a kilt

[figheadair]

A 8 yd tweed kilt with a hem is going to be a bit of a beast and, I suspect, unworkable. You could of course run the h/b horizontally in which case you'd possibly have a selvedge and no need for a hem. 8 yds is still too much cloth IMHO.