Tartan

                From the start of this brief I wanted to work with tartans/checks since I had an interest in learning about them - this is largely due to visiting Kirsty McDougall’s studio in London and being fascinated by ‘Dashing Tweeds’; putting a spin on a traditional suit. In addition to this I have always been intrigued by Patrick Grant after years of watching ‘The Great British Sewing Bee’. Because of this I want to try and take my work back to my initial idea now that I have had lots of time to experiment on the looms. Therefore I took out this book by Jonathan Faiers to expand on my knowledge of tartan/check patterns. 

                    The first part of the book I decided to focus on was how to plan to create a tartan/check pattern. Rather than jumping straight into sampling and trying to guess how to do it, I thought it best to try and plan what I want to do. The first thing to clearly notice from the example picture is that the colours in both the warp and the weft are the same. This is a problem for me as of right now since I am working on a loom that isn’t mine (different warp). I plan on editing the warp as best as I can, until I return to my own, to get the most optimal outcomes possible. 

                 A good example from this book of the same warp and weft is from Vivienne Westwood’s AW04/05 collection, ‘Exhibition’. Westwood is well known for her tartans and, here, clearly shows how effective colour choice and EPI can be.

                A less busy example of tartan can be seen below from Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton AW04/05. Although is appears to be less busy than Westwood’s, if you look closely you can see that there is a lot more going on than can be seen at first glance. This again shows how colour choices will massively affect the appearance of the fabric.

Faiers, J. (2008) Tartan (textiles that changed the world). Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic.