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'?

[GrainReaper]

The sett isn't centered on the kilt as I'd expect it to be.

[Tarheel]

I don't see where to begin. I imagine the serrations of an old hand saw (9 teeth to 1 inch) used in cabinet making. Good luck with this one.

[GrainReaper]

And the pleats are wonky

[Grizzled Ian]

Do you notice anything 'odd'?

Procul Harum comes to mind: contemplating the pleating on display here has left me -

'feeling kind of seasick'.

There is such an unevenness of pleating in the three sets across the back of this kilt. Most notably, the red stripe is there in the left-hand sett, nicely centred; off-centred and tapering up to disappear a few inches below the top in the centre sett; and completely absent from the right-hand sett.

There are similar nasty abuses of the narrow yellow stripes, and there is an unnecessary reduplication of the black stripes in the right-hand side of the centre sett.

This kilt should have failed the kiltmaker's own "would I be happy to wear this in public" test. It all suggests a maker experiencing mind-altering chemicals, except that on the other hand, there is no trace of stair-stepping of the horizontal stripes across the fell.

I will be interested in how Steve embraces the rebuild, and in particular, the solution for putting in a 4 inch longer waist band, presumably without access to any of the scrap from the original build.

[The Wizard of BC]

As you may have noticed there are quite a few things in the back of this kilt that are not what we would call "normal".
To illustrate, here is the front apron.



Notice please that the center element is a double yellow line. We would normally keep the same element centered in the back.

Here is the back again. Notice that the double yellow lines are not centered.



The entire back of the kilt is sort of off centered.

Another thing I noticed is that while the pattern is off centered to the left, there are two additional pleats on the left. At first I thought that perhaps the kilt had been re-sized once before by opening up and adding those two pleats. Then I noticed that the sporran loops are aligned with the offset pattern. This must have been done this way when the kilt was made.

You have already noticed that there are large "spear points" in the Fell where the tapering cuts off elements of the Tartan.

Now notice that on the right the pleating is missing an entire red line.

[The Wizard of BC]

So, we have a kilt that does not fit.
Along with it being too small in the hips and waist, the Fell is about two inches too short. This causes the pleats to splay out and hang wonky. (FYI - Wonky is a kiltmaking technical term.)

Next I grabbed the top buckles and pulled just as would happen when this kilt is strapped on.
Yep, you guessed it, this kilt is made with no stabilizer. The entire back of the kilt stretches putting undo stress on the pleat stitching and distorting the fabric.

Now for the really strange part. I am telling the customer that this kilt is a write off. That it will cost more to fix it than it cost him to buy it new.
AND HE DOES NOT CARE!.. This kilt has great sentimental value to him and he wants it right. He had no idea what a kilt should look like or how it should be made. He just wants his kilt to fit and to look good.

I explain how much it is going to cost him in labor and I also make it very clear that there is a very good chance that due to the pleat cutouts there may be nothing that I can do to make it larger and/or to fix the pleating.

He does not care. He tells me to do whatever it takes to make this kilt right. He says that he now knows about what is wrong with the construction and tells me to proceed to tear his kilt apart. He tells me to call him once I have it apart and to let him know if I can make it larger and fix the pleats. If I tell him there is nothing that can be done he will pay me for my time including that necessary to put it back together just the way it was when he first walked in.

[The Wizard of BC]

The first thing I need to do is remove the liner and take a look at the interfacing.



As you look at these pics please notice that the individual pieces of interfacing are not stitched to each other.

That the stitching holding the interfacing in place is sparse and in some places missing all together.




The purpose of the interfacing is to provide vertical stiffness to the back of the kilt. To achieve this the interfacing is normally folded multiple times. This should create something like the boning in a corset.
This interfacing is just a single layer of 5 individual pieces.



Notice also that this is not the normal Hair Canvas that we are used to. This is actually a cotton burlap like woven fabric.

There is no stabilizer in this kilt.

[Profane James]

Sounds genuine to me - not just throwing money around. I wonder what inspires his desire for it to fit....

[The Wizard of BC]

For anyone who has never seen a kilt that has been unstitched and returned to a flat length of fabric here one is.

This is actually a pretty rare sight.



What you are seeing here are the pleat reveals and the cut-aways that are normally hidden behind the lining of your traditional kilt.

And here you can see the original join in the fabric where the two halves were put together. On this kilt that join was done with a serger. It was just joined with only a cusory attempt to line up the Tartan Sett.



Now I need to find out if I have enough to re-pleat this.

I figured that this is one of those times when my Engineer's way of laying out pleats would come in real handy.
You may remember that I did a tutorial on my pleat lay-out system. Barb says that it cannot work but for a job like this it gives me a visual reference over the entire Sett that should be across the back of the kilt.

Luckily I was able to use the waistbanding for this job. I ironed a strip of fusible interfacing onto the waistbanding strip and then marked it with my layout grid.

For the full tutorial on how to do this please see this thread. http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=82677



I then did some test pleats to see how it would look.



After one or two tests I found that if I moved one of the Red lines of the Tartan and used that as the center back I could just make it work. IF And that was a big IF.