Tartan Design Questions

**OC Richard** · 9th April 16, 03:03 AM

What a beautiful tartan, Todd!

As an artist who studied design at university, it's interesting to me that though the name of this thread is "tartan design questions" not a single word has been written about tartan design.

Colours: warm, cool, tertiary, complimentary, saturation, etc etc.

Pattern: proportion, balance, consistency of scale, etc etc.

I think it's why I see so many recent tartans which are clumsy, simplistic, graphic-looking, etc.

Todd's above does everything well. It's fantastic.

**Todd Bradshaw** · 9th April 16, 10:47 AM

I liked that one a lot - right until I pasted a bunch of them together to see a larger sample of the pattern and saw the op-art effect. Would it do it in real life? I don't know, but spending $900 to find out didn't seem wise.

I do enjoy the idea of playing with the visual effect of 3-D depth with the designs, or seeing if I can make colors or elements "pop" and stand out (sculpture major in college). Again though, it's one of those things that would need to be woven in order to see if it really happens similarly in wool. If I thought I could break even doing it, I could see designing universal tartans ("fashion tartans" seems like a rather insulting term) having them woven and retailing yardage, but I think you would lose your shirt trying to sell expensive wool to most Americans.

Christmas with square holly

**TheOfficialBren** · 10th April 16, 02:38 PM

Thank you, fellow X-markers, for your input and advice.

I've been working on a preliminary design but due to the limited Internet available whist I'm deployed it's a bit slow going. It is, however, a nice project to chip away at when the net is up.

Please do continue the discussion. Even if I'm not replying to the thread right away it's an excellent topic for the forum.

As to tartan design itself, what is rule of thumb to produce a sett that is about 6 1/2 to 7 inches? Is this too small? Should I scale it up?

Thank you, friends.

**KyleAisteach** · 10th April 16, 03:06 PM

What the sett size determines is how deep your pleats need to be (and, relatedly, how many pleats there can be). The reason for this is when pleating, you're either going to fold one complete sett into the pleat (if doing military pleating) or just slightly more than one complete sett (if pleating to the sett). So if your sett is 6", each pleat eats up 6-7" inches of fabric. Ergo, a 7-yard kilt in a tartan with a 6" sett will have more and shallower pleats than a 7-yard kilt in a tartan with a 9" sett.

I designed my tartan for a 6" sett, but I produced it in a lighter fabric and it ended up being a 4.5" sett. I found that to be a good size, personally. It left me with slightly shallow pleats, but the result is that the kilts look like they're higher-yardage than they really are (unless you know enough about kiltmaking to notice that the pleats on are the shallow end of the spectrum).

I tend to think that if your design is in the 6.5-7" sett range, you're in the right ballpark, but some people adore the look of large setts, even if it results in a kilt that only has 10 pleats.

**Todd Bradshaw** · 10th April 16, 05:21 PM

FYI the Scotweb Tartan Designer puts the sett size of our tartan at 6.5". The yarn count is 278 yarns to make up a sett. The design software uses half of that, as it adds a mirror image of the pattern you design to make the sett (so you'll actually be picking around 140 different yarns in colors of your choosing for the design). Two different Dalgliesh-woven versions of our design in heavyweight wool came out accurately at about 6.5" sett size. Since lighter cloth is made from thinner thread, lighter weights of the same yarn count will have a slightly narrower sett. Our Marton Mills 13 oz. versions of the same tartan and yarn count come out with about a 6" sett.

**TheOfficialBren** · 11th April 16, 05:28 AM

Mr Bradshaw, very good to know. I was getting a bit confused with Scotweb's tartan designer. I was thinking that my sett was too small so I kept scaling it up and only saw part of the design.

**TheOfficialBren** · 11th April 16, 02:38 PM

So, here's the thread count copied directly from Scotweb's "share" tab.

KK4HW2R4NB56KK4HY2KK4DBG66KK4R2NB4

I apologise for not posting an image. Our Internet out here us really sluggish.
Any thoughts/feedback?

Thank you.

**Todd Bradshaw** · 11th April 16, 10:51 PM

Plugging random colors into that yarn count yields a pattern that looks fine and the sett size is good, but I haven't seen a list of their yarn colors that will decipher the actual colors for the weaving code you posted (KK, HW, NB, etc.). They seem to have made a few changes in the design software since the last time I used it. There is a broader selection in the weaver's colors yarn palette, which is nice. The previews generated by the "enlarge" button are bigger, but a bit more cartoonish and less realistic than they looked before. That part of the software was nicer before they changed it.

**TheOfficialBren** · 13th April 16, 05:44 AM

Thank you, Mr Bradshaw.

I'm going to try to get to some better Internet tonight so that I can post an image of what I have so far for further review by the Rabble.

I'm glad that I took the advice presented earlier and played with the Weaver's Colours. They really do offer a lot more options.

So, next question, the sett size in the previewer on Scotweb is a suitable size for kilts, correct?

**Todd Bradshaw** · 13th April 16, 11:13 AM

The designer says 6.9" sett size, which is in their "good for weaving" range. If you can't get your photos to work, post a description of the colors for the various yarn codes and I can approximate them. The pattern is still on my copy of the designer and I can plug them in and post a copy that should be pretty close.