Boisdale Of Canary Wharf

A Tartan, associated mostly with Scottish culture, is a woven cloth consisting of criss-crossed patterns and vertical bands in a variety of colors. Tartan is often seen in Scottish kilts, bag pipes, and other fashions.

Tartans are made up of two parts, a warp (which is vertical stripes) and a weft (horizontal stripes). It’s important that each warp and weft meet at a right angle, otherwise you’ll end up with a different, and rather crooked, design. When combining the two pieces, the different colors on the warp and weft combine to form new colors, while the original color stays in some parts. Once combined, there is a new number of colors. The more colors you start out with, the more will end up in the finished product. For example, say you started out with six base colors. When you combine the warp and the weft, you’ll produce fifteen new colors for a total amount of twenty-two colors. The sett, or the sequence of the threads, begins at the edge of the fabric or other medium and reverses on pivot points. Pivot points are usually just smaller lines separating the larger chunks of color. To count color threads (you can count both the color and the width), you would do this: If you had 4 black green threads, 24 black threads, 4 green threads, and 24 black threads, it would be represented by ‘G4 K24 G4 K24′.

There’s many colors that Tartans can be made from, and each shade has it’s own meaning. They are varied by muted, ancient, and modern colors. Modern dyes are blue, black and green chemical dyes instead of natural. Ancient is lighter shades produced by natural dyes. Muted dyes are the shades you’d find between ancient and modern. Many people think that the colors signify something. They do, but this idea has only existed in the past century. A popular misconception is that red Tartans were worn by warriors so their blood was camouflaged. Today, in countries like America and Canada, blue symbolizes water, green symbolizes forests, and yellow symbolizes crops.

Tartans have flourished since 400BC. Although the thread didn’t exist in Scotland until the 16th century, it thrives there now. Tartans were mostly associated with regions and districts, but are now associated mostly with Scottish clans. Today, tartans are made from thread, plastics, and paper.