As you’ve been reading these posts you will have observed me talk about flags for each of the Black Country towns and you have also seen my progress with a Black Country tartan. This surely leads (or at least it does in my mind!) to thinking that if it’s a good idea to have flags for each town why not tartans as well?

The answer to that question is why indeed not! In fact, as some of you have seen from various media sources I have already designed a Halesowen tartan and it too is now an official symbol. Here it is in all it’s glory:

(Please note that I have recreated these tartans myself to make the actual design of how the colours merge easier to see. Individual stitches can’t be seen now but this style does make for a very bold and dynamic representation)

With exactly the same thinking that went into designing the town flags, I’ve begun to set about designing plaids for each of the different towns of the Black Country, which I will showcase for you all here in these blogs.

Before I get too into this it should make it clear that these designs are not official tartans, they are just my plaid designs and proposals. If they were to become official, like the Halesowen and Black Country one, they would need to be checked by the tartan registry for uniqueness, woven and then submitted. I’ll be honest now and say that I simply don’t have the money to do this (certainly the latter two stages) on my own.

However if people out there are inspired by what I’ve done with the Halesowen tartan then I’ll happily give them help in either designing their own or making one of my proposals official. (And I have already had some interest for a couple of towns!)

So just before I leave you for this week here is one of my other plaid proposals – Dudley.

Primarily red for the representational colour of the town but blending some darker red to help balance the tartan and make a feature of the centre of the set. Blacks and greys merge to evoke the stones of the castle standing proud over the town. The white alludes to the horizontal band of white in the coat of arms and green and yellow provide representation to the salamander, itself denoting the iron industry.