Sett Guide: Real Plaid, Tartan and Check Patterns
Engine guide · Updated 19 September 2026
In short: Sett builds cloth from a thread count and a weave. You write the stripes in threads, pick a structure — plain, twill, basket, herringbone or one you draw yourself — and it draws the actual interlacement thread by thread, as a repeat that tiles exactly.
What Sett is for
Sett is the engine for anything built from a repeating colour sequence crossed in two directions: tartan, buffalo check, gingham, houndstooth, windowpane and any sett you design. It works the way a mill does. The stripe run is written in threads, the weave decides which thread is on top at each crossing, and the yarn decides how big the cloth really is.
Four ways to start
- Type the thread count.
K4 B24 K2 W6is a colour letter and a number of threads. On a mirrored (reflective) sett the first and last stripe are the pivots the rest reflects about. "Numbers only" lets you type just the counts and colour the stripes afterwards by clicking them. - Pick a ready-made check. Gingham, buffalo check, shepherd's check, houndstooth, district check, glen check, Prince of Wales, windowpane, tattersall, tartan and madras. Choosing one sets the bands and the weave and keeps your colours, your yarn and your sett.
- Describe it. Type a sentence such as "navy and burgundy winter tartan" and press "weave it". It reads English and Turkish, and can also take a recipe pasted from a chat assistant.
- Read it off a photograph. Draw a box round one repeat of a real cloth and the sett, its colours and its weave are read from it.
Key controls
- Stripes — each stripe shows its width in millimetres beside its thread count. Drag to reorder, duplicate or delete. The cloth can be a check (the sett is mirrored into the weft), a stripe (one weft colour), or free and dobby, where the weft has stripes of its own or each stripe has its own weave.
- Weave structure — plain, 2/2 twill, 3/1 twill, 2/1 twill, 2/2 basket, herringbone, with an S or Z direction. Open the loom to draw your own draft on a grid of up to 16 ends by 16 picks.
- Yarn — a thread fineness slider in English cotton count (Ne), a choice of fibre (worsted, woollen, tweed, cotton, linen or silk) and cloth presets such as kilt worsted, heavy wool tweed, cotton madras, shirting poplin and cotton voile. Staple, twist, slub and crimp shape the look. The yarn fixes the physical size: the same stripes at Ne 5 and Ne 40 are two different cloths.
- Colour — twenty palettes, your own colours, and Generate, Shuffle and Recolour for new variations of the same design. In the studio a Generate or a Shuffle costs a token; Recolour does not.
Size, files and products
The ruler along the top of the stage is in real centimetres. Export a PNG at 72, 150, 300 or 600 dpi, or the production files a mill or a print shop asks for: an A4 sheet at true size with centimetre rulers and the colours used, a spec sheet with the thread count, tile size and finished dimensions, a WIF weaving draft for weaving software, and an ASE palette. "On a product" shows the design on a framed print or a papered wall, and on a photographed shirt and dress.
File types and resolution depend on your plan: PNG at screen resolution is included on every plan, and higher resolutions and the production files are for paid plans. The pricing page has the full table.
Who uses Sett
Etsy and print-on-demand sellers use it for checks and plaids that need to look genuinely woven. Mills and small labels use it to prototype a sett and hand over a true-scale sheet before committing yarn to a loom.
Try it live: Sett is on every plan, including Free — clean exports with no watermark.
Choose what to create →Frequently asked questions
Do I need to understand weaving to use Sett?
No. Start from a ready-made check, describe a cloth in words, or read one off a photograph. The loom and the thread counts are there when you want full control.
How does a tartan mirror?
A tartan sett reflects about its pivots, so the sett is written as half and the loom reads it back the other way. That is why the first and last stripe are marked as the mirror axes.
Can I export a design for a mill?
Yes: an A4 sheet at true size with centimetre rulers, a spec sheet, and a WIF weaving draft. Which of these you can export depends on your plan.
Is Sett available on the Free plan?
Yes. Manual sett design is on every plan; Free exports are limited to screen resolution.