Fellow Xmarks tartan owners....

[Hamish]

I am again coming slightly late to another thread! Being, I suppose, one of the first to actually receive a kilt tailored from the first run of the X Marks tartan, I did experience disappointment when seeing the 'bleeding selvedge' for the first time. My next thought was, well it would take a pretty sharp eye to notice this once the fabric has been made up and the kilt is being worn - and that seems to be the case. Many friends and neighbours have seen me in this kilt and not one of them has noticed the 'dirty' white stripe - until I have pointed it out to them myself!

Yes, it may not be 100% perfect, but it is not serious enough to worry me - I am just proud to be wearing the X Marks tartan and having the resulting opportunity to talk to others about this excellent forum.

[Barb T]

I'm really late posting on this one, because I didn't see that the discussion had migrated to the general forum. As Matt said, it's the kiltmaker's job to ask the customer when there's an issue, and that's what I did. And a hem in a kilt of this weight is really no big deal - I personally think that a hem is less noticeable than the bleeding stripe, but, as Matt said, it's a personal choice. I tend to be anal about these things.

Having said that, I will say that the fact that the two halves of the X Marks fabric don't have quite the same sett size is an irritating issue. The two pieces that I have are off by over 1/4" between the selvedge and the middle of the double width, which means fudging the join. I've had to deal with this a few times before. Once happened recently with a new run from Lochcarron, and they took the 4 yards of double width back and sent me an 8 yard single width piece cut from their double width run. The other happened with several lengths of tartan at various times from West Coast Woolen Mills (the predecessor to F&K). In the latter case, I didn't notice it the first time until I had pleated the whole kilt (not knowing that I had to look for it....), and I unfortunately made the underapron half of the kilt out of the slightly wider half. I wound up having to put the buckles and straps on so that the underapron stuck up above the apron at the top by 1/4" so that it wouldn't hang out below the apron. Fortunately, it was my daughter's kilt, and because she was a dancer wearing a vest, it didn't show. I thereafter made several other kilts from fabric from the same mill, and (knowing enought to check ahead of time) I made the underapron from the narrower piece so it wouldn't be noticeable. As many of you said, it's the kiltmaker's problem. But it is an irritating one when most tartan does match across the fold.

If you have two kilts to make from the same tartan, then it's not a problem, if you know enough to check for a non-match. I was able to solve the problem with the X Marks tartan without fudging the join because I had two pieces from Steve. I simply took the narrower half from both pieces to make one kilt and the wider half from both pieces to make the second kilt.

Because kiltmakers split double width pieces and commonly order only one kilt length in a given tartan, it's not clear to me why a mill wouldn't work hard to make the two halves match, or, if a piece doesn't match, why a mill wouldn't alert a kiltmaker and offer to send a single cut piece if the two halves don't match. Maybe I'm being anal - but, if someone is going to spend $500-600 on a garment, I'd prefer to have it as perfect as possible.

Barb

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

Barb, great post, and I agree that it should match. Isn't the defnition of a tartan that the pattern matches from the warp to the weft?So how can this happen? I am having trouble visualizing it. I know that you would normally take double width material and fold it in half lengthwise and cut it into 2 equal width pieces. Then you would stitch the two halves together to come up with the length necessary for a kilt, and hide the seam between the pieces in a pleat. What I don't understand is how the sett can be off betewwn the two pieces, and maybe I don't understand the weaving process well enough. I would expect that if doing the above process would intially result in two equal lengths and widths of tartan that are mirror image of each other. How does the weaving go wring such that they don't match up? I don't know if you have an answer, but I was curious. It seems to me that the weaver was not consistent during the weaving of the entire width of material.

[Barb T]

You know, I don't really know, either.The threads on the loom pass through a reed (the thing that beats the warp threads into the web), and the spaces in the reed are all identical. The only thing I can think of is that either the stretcher isn't set symmetrically or the tension on the flying shuttle is higher going one way than the other and there's more draw-in on one side of the web than the other. I honestly don't know. I'm just speculating.

On the other subject (warp vs weft), tartan is supposed to be a 45 weave, meaning that the twill lines make a perfect 45 degree angle. If that were the case, the warp and weft would have absolutely identical threads per inch. It actually doesn't work that way. While all the blocks look square and the twill line looks to be 45 degrees, you can't actually match the warp and the weft because the sett is a bit bigger warp-wise than weft-wise. This normally isn't a problem, because the only times you have to match tartan is in a join (which is always weft to weft) and at the double fringe and top band, where you can normally choose from a weft-wise scrap for the fringe and a warp-wise scrap for the top band (which will only match in the apron anyway). If a kilt is _really long_, there might not be a strip left over that is wide enough for the top band, and piecing a weftwise strip is the only option. It won't match in the apron, but there's nothing you can do about it.

Cheers,

Barb

[MacWage]

Very informative!

Thanks to you all.