The Plaid Studio / What to create / District check
District check pattern generator
A district check is shepherd's check grown up: twelve threads of each colour on a 2/2 twill. The Scottish estates each had their own, woven so a stalker could be told apart on the hill — quiet browns, moss greens and greys, all of them the same construction in different yarns.
- Thread count
G12 F12 - Weave2/2 twill
- SymmetryRepeating straight round
- SeamlessYes — the tile repeats by construction, in every engine
- ExportPNG and SVG, A4 spec sheet with a centimetre ruler, WIF weaving draft
What makes it district check
Twelve and twelve on a twill. At this size the broken corner reads as a soft edge rather than a tooth, which is why a district check looks woollen even before the yarn is chosen.
Tweed jackets, shooting coats, upholstery, heavier shirting.
How to make one
- Open the Sett engine and pick district check from the ready-made checks in the panel. The studio writes its thread count into the cloth for you.
- Put your colours on it. Choose a palette or paste your own hex codes; the ground, the field and the lines take their colours in that order.
- Set the scale in threads. The bands are threads, not pixels, so the check keeps its proportions when you change the yarn count or the repeat width.
- Export what the job needs. A seamless PNG for print-on-demand, an SVG for vector work, an A4 sheet with a ruler for a mill, or a WIF draft for a loom.
Questions
What is the difference between a district check and a glen check?
A district check is one even check. A glen check alternates a coarse band with a fine one in the same sett, which is what gives it its ladder.
Which colours belong on a district check?
Historically the estate's own: peat brown, moss, oatmeal, slate. Any two colours work; the quiet ones are what make it read as tweed.
