Our Clan Tartan is one you can be proud to wear.  Give it an airing at next year's Burns Night Supper.......... or any other function !

                         www.royal-stewart-kilts.co.uk    

                              www.tartankilts.com 

                               www.scotclans.com

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First of all, you need to understand that a tartan pattern develops out of a single list of coloured threads called a thread count. Tartans consist of broader bands of colour called the under check which are often decorated or embellished with narrower lines of colour called the over check.

The largest group of tartan uses the three-colour design with the Black Watch tartan as its basis. Once you have grasped the basic principles, you will be soon able to appreciate many designs that utilise and develop these simple ideas.

Tartans are woven on long coloured threads called the warp and the same pattern is then crossed through the warp threads, thread by thread, to form the weft, the weft threads passing twice from side to side back to the same edge of the cloth called the selvedge. The thread count is repeated in one of two ways. If repeated in reverse order, the tartan is said to be symmetrical. If repeated from the beginning, then it is asymmetrical.
You will need a little practice at READING a tartan, but it is not really all that difficult. The main thing is to be able to recognise the two unique points within the pattern which are called pivots.

To locate the pivots, find a diagonal of squares that are all pure colour. Most tartans are symmetrical and the warp and weft cross to make these pure colours. This is where the thread count starts. In some patterns, there are isolated areas where the same colour is used in different parts of the count but usually these are not square but rectangular.

The main component of a tartan pattern is the under check. This is formed by the larger areas of colour that underlie the over check of smaller lines and bands.

The simplest under check is the two colour design, usually of equal size where little or no over checking is used.

A third colour can be introduced, at the border of the two pivotal under checks, to create a three colour pattern. The most widespread use of this is the Black Watch family, of which there are hundreds, in which blue and green have black placed between them. There is a tendency for this third colour to be narrower.

The over check breaks up the under check pattern. It is made up of a series of thinner stripes that modify the broader bands of colour.

The colours are Y = yellow, B = blue, K = black, G = green. The thread count is as follows :

Y6 Pivot point
G4
K4
G52
B44
K6
B6
K6 Pivot point
B6
K6
B44
G52
K4
G4
Y6 Pivot point

You can see that the pattern from Y6 (yellow, six threads) to the next Y6 travels diagonally to the middle thin black stripe K6 (pivot point) then it will proceed in the reverse order until it reaches the next Y6 (pivot point). This is not visible in our tartan sample reproduced above, but you can easily understand that this is what happens. 
 

Of course, you can also start from the black pivot point and proceed through the yellow pivot point to the next black pivot point.  This will move the black stripes to the edge of the cloth, instead of the yellow.

www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/interactive/weaver/index.html