Traditional tartan is made with alternating bands of coloured (pre-dyed) threads woven in usually matching warp and weft in a simple 2/2 twill pattern.
Outside of Scotland, tartan is sometimes also known as ' plaid' (particularly in North America) however in Scotland, a plaid is a large piece of tartan cloth which can be worn several ways. The earliest surviving samples of tartan-style cloth are around 3,000 years old and were discovered in Xinjiang, China. Tartan is particularly associated with Scotland, as Scottish kilts almost always have tartan patterns. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in other materials. Tartan ( Scottish Gaelic: breacan ) is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours, forming simple or complex rectangular patterns.
