Looking for Advice

[FossilHunter]

I am in pursuit of that very same thing at the moment. It is surprising that almost nobody makes tartan cloth heavier than 16oz. One or two weavers claim to have 18oz, but there is some debate on whether there's really any difference. A 22oz coarse tartan these days would be a specialty item requiring custom weight yarn and/or a nontypical loom setup, if you could even find someone willing to take it on. And it would still be with modern softer wool, not the coarse wool that is apparently extinct. If I do manage to find someone to try a real heavyweight weave, it will cost a fortune.

You could try weaving it yourself. Peter MacDonald has done some hand-woven reconstructions. Though I couldn't tell you the weight.

[Tobus]

You could try weaving it yourself. Peter MacDonald has done some hand-woven reconstructions. Though I couldn't tell you the weight.

Oh, I've considered it! The cost of a suitable loom, and having to clear the space to use it, pretty much nixes that idea unless I wanted to do a whole lot of tartan weaving beyond what I need. And from past threads here on the forum from people who have done their own weaving, it takes a lot of time and expense. It's just not practical, unless one were doing it for the sheer joy of weaving.

And then there are the technical obstacles. The yarn weight required for heavier tartan is not easily found. There is the option of using a lighter yarn, double-sleyed, but that would take a lot of experimentation. Trial and error. Throwing away a lot of money and effort. Still, I suppose it is an option, albeit one that would be a last resort out of sheer desperation.

I found a local craft weaving shop and had high hopes that they could help me, but they don't deal in yarns or fabrics this light. They mostly do rugs and such, using big fat yarns. They don't even carry the 16/2 yarns needed for 16oz tartan and aren't interested in any of what I wanted to talk about.

Currently, I have some feelers out to some industrial mills in the hopes that they can at least weave something in the range of 18oz. And there's the option for fulling the cloth (washing in hot water and agitating) to shrink it a little, thus increasing the nominal weight and fluffing it somewhat. Without saying too much at this point, there are experiments underway that are yielding some promising results on small samples. No telling how it would work on an 8-yard length of tartan. But even this option doesn't yield anything resembling the old "hard tartans" that are coarse and stiff. If anything, fulling the cloth softens it. There's still much to discern from the testing.

The most likely way would be to find a small operation that raises sheep with suitable coarse wool and commission some spun yarn in the size needed, then have it custom-dyed. This would be very expensive. Then have a proper weaver use that yarn to make the tartan, with minimal finishing, so that it's still "in the grease". I do happen to think that there's a small niche market for tartan that's made with more of a traditional feel and heft, but the commercial tartan industry wants nothing to do with it. They're fat and happy selling 16oz finished (soft) tartan.