Blonde Girl With Blue Eyes Strips A Tartan Skirt And Other Clothes On The Couch In The Living Room

Today tartan is generally used to describe the pattern, not limited to textiles. In America the term plaid is commonly used to describe tartan. The word plaid, derived from the Scottish Gaelic plaide, meaning "blanket", was first used of any rectangular garment, sometimes made up of tartan, particularly that which preceded the modern kilt (belted plaid). In time, plaid was used to describe blankets themselves.
Construction
Each thread in the warp crosses each thread in the weft at right angles. Where a thread in the warp crosses a thread of the same colour in the weft they produce a solid colour on the tartan, while a thread crossing another of a different colour produces an equal mixture of the two colours. Thus, a sett of two base colours produces three different colours including one mixture. The total number of colours, including mixtures, increases exponentially with the number of base colours so a sett of six base colours produces fifteen mixtures and a total of twenty-one different colours. This means that the more stripes and colours used, the more blurred and subdued the tartan's pattern becomes.