Is it a kilt - Or a jig saw puzzle?

[The Wizard of BC]

As I have done in the past I thought perhaps our members would like to follow along as I rebuild another kilt.

This one presented a few unique challenges and gave me an opportunity that does not come along very often. A total re-build of a kilt by taking out all the stitching, returning the kilt to one long length of fabric and re-making it from scratch.

But - As you know the pleats are cut away behind the Fell. This presents some unique problems. The kiltmaker must work around these cut-outs.



So, to begin -

A customer came into the shop a while back. Like so may others the first words were "Is it possible to make a kilt bigger?

So I asked him to take his kilt out of the garment bag try it on so we could see what we were dealing with. The first thing that was very evident was that the kilt was just over 4 inches too small. The under apron was showing out from underneath the outer apron and the hips were gaping badly.

I marked the kilt at the new measurements and was mentally preparing to tell the customer the bad news that this would be a very expensive job and that I could not guarantee that it could be done due to the cut-outs.

But what am I faced with when I laid the kilt out on my table? Not only was this kilt now too small but I seriously doubt that the maker had ever read Barb's Book.

Here is the back of the kilt.




Do you notice anything 'odd'?