From Coat of Arms to Tartan: The Cadilhac Case.

[ctbuchanan]

As a Buchanan I'm partial to asymmetrical tartans. Ours have been made into kilts for close to 200 years now with pleasing results. I have a modern with a smaller sett and an ancient with a rather large sett. Both look great to me.

I've also read many commentaries that say an asymmetrical design is more pleasing to the eye which is why the Buchanan Modern is so popular in shirts by Lands End, LL Bean, Orvis etc.

I like your design very much and think it will make a fine kilt. What a nice thing to premiere at the wedding.

CTBuchanan

[Tarheel]

[QUOTE=figheadair;1319703]I'm not sure I understand the comment about an asymmetric sett but it's definitely possible to pleat to sett as this example of Glenorchy shows.
QUOTE]

I have again gained from the experienced and learned members. The kilt pictured (pleated to the sett) appears to be pleated to the stripe to my quick glance. My knowledge grows the more I explore. I find this is a pleasant sensation.

[figheadair]

[QUOTE=Tarheel;1319711]

I have again gained from the experienced and learned members. The kilt pictured (pleated to the sett) appears to be pleated to the stripe to my quick glance. My knowledge grows the more I explore. I find this is a pleasant sensation.

Appearances can be deceptive. This one is defnitely pleated to sett.

[Macman]

Ah! From their website, I read that the minimum order is 4 meters, so I guess this is double width? Thanks for the great example for the asymmetrical sett pleat!
@OC Richard: Well, my face is not all that symmetrical, so I guess it's a good fit :-D

I know that you're the kiltmaker, and I'm certainly not, but isn't there a problem with double-width material and asymmetrical setts? Do you not have to cut the material, and then to keep the selvedge when you join the two pieces, the sett gets reversed?

[Todd Bradshaw]

I think he's right on that one. It would make an interesting design challenge that's probably best avoided.

Todd: Thanks so much for that preview, mighty great stuff! Is there a tool online for that?

As expensive as custom tartans are, I like to arm myself with as much info as possible before opening my wallet. First I open the tartan designer's preview in Photoshop and splice a whole bunch of them together to get a good idea of what a hunk maybe 24" square or so would look like. It's often a very different look from what the small preview showed - sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Then I have a Photoshop file I made that has everything in different layers to make the kilt cartoons. I can take the extended tartan preview that I made and plug it in as the new tartan layer. It's a concept cartoon, not a rendering - but it's certainly a lot better than just trying to picture the final product in my mind and hope for the best.

[figheadair]

I know that you're the kiltmaker, and I'm certainly not, but isn't there a problem with double-width material and asymmetrical setts? Do you not have to cut the material, and then to keep the selvedge when you join the two pieces, the sett gets reversed?

There's only an issue with double width materail and an asymmetric sett if one tries to make an 8 yd (or 5-6 yd) kilt with half the length of the material required. The simple solution is to find someone else who wants the materail too, cut it in half horizontallly which will give two lengths of single width cloth.

[cadilhac]

Thanks very much for bringing that up! This could have been a bad surprise indeed, as my feeble mind couldn't picture that in advance I got in touch with Scotweb, and they told me that the fabric is single-width, so it's not a problem at the end :-)

Again, thanks for all the amazing feedback, that really helped me have a clearer idea, and the design is now slightly changed as per the advice of @OC Richard:



Cheers!

[OC Richard]

My foremost inspiration is my family's coat of arms:



I designed the following tartan, based in particular on Québec's tartan:

Attachment 28057

(https://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/design/86306)

This confuses me. You say your foremost inspiration is that coat of arms, but then say your tartan is based on Quebec's.

Seems to me the options are

1) base a tartan on that coat of arms
2) base a tartan on Quebec's tartan
3) make a tartan combining elements of the two (which is what I think you did)

For to me, the coat of arms and the Quebec tartan are miles apart.

(The Quebec tartan)



I can see the value of fusing the coat of arms with an existing tartan (even though the two seem unrelated visually) because going directly from the coat of arms to tartan, a literal reading of the coat of arms in tartan terms, leads to a design that's not very attractive:



or

[cadilhac]

Thanks for your great input, @OC Richard! Indeed, my first attempts were way more true to the coat of arms, leading to designs that were either unappealing or did not look anything like tartans. To get a good "tartan feel" to it, I skimmed through dozens and dozens of designs, until I realized that I really like the construction of Québec's. Hence I used this pattern with the colors of the coat of arms, added the three stripes and some other minor tweaks, leading to my proposal above. Now certainly it does not respect the order given by the blazon, but I feel it is still somewhat faithful, and—also importantly—appealing. That the structure is given by Québec's tartan is thus but a lucky coincidence :-)

Cheers!

[OC Richard]

Looking back and forth between your tartan and the Quebec tartan, as best I can tell the two are the same, only with different colours.

That brings up the issue of whether it would be considered a new tartan, or not.

Because, if I understand the protocol (such as it is) when one changes the colours the tartan is still regarded as being the same tartan. Maybe it's a grey area. Because there are various colour variants of Royal Stewart (black, camel, grey, navy, white, etc) which are all still called "Stuart" (Black Stewart, Navy Stewart, etc) but on the other hand the colour variant of Royal Stewart with a royal blue background is called MacBeth.

Something to consider; somebody who doesn't know the correct name might end up calling your tartan "Black Quebec" or "Quebec Hunting".

Anyhow here's another stab at following the crest only, but reducing the white and trying to make it look "more like a tartan"