Making my first kilt

[gwynng]

Started my first kilt about a week ago thanks to the help of Barb's TAoK. This was not something that I could have done without the instructions from the book. For my first go round I am working with a poly-wool blend that is not quite medium weight, but seems to hang fairly well. It is similar to Grey Douglas Modern, on a 6 inch sett. The main selling features for me were 1) it was the best thing available in the area 2) it was inexpensive and 3) it had a decent selvage so I avoided having to hem the damned thing!

Here are a couple of pics when I finished the pleats. I did cheat and use a sewing machine on the bulk of the pleats. It was just too daunting to take on 25 pleats by hand, but now that I have had a chance to do a good bit of hand sewing on the other parts of the kilt, think that I'll definitely try it down the road.

I wanted to have a dark back and since the black band had no center stripe opted to do a pleating to the band. It also was a little more forgiving in the pleating part above the fell, but may prove tricky below the fell. Visually it is a little dull across the back, but when the pleats open it is kind of a nice surprise. I hope I am able to maintain the line downward when I press it. We'll see...



and a view from the inner apron side...

[usonian]

Nice job on the pleats! I would be interested to see a close-up of your machine-stitching; it's invisible in these photos! I had the same concern about keeping everything straight and aligned below the fell for pressing, but as long as you take care when basting them everything will come out fine.

[gwynng]

Thanks. The pleats do have visible stitching. I haven't figured out how to machine stitch from the back side of the kilt. If anyone knows how to do so with accuracy, please share it. My method was to lay the pleat out, pin it between parts that needed to match up and sew from the waist down to the end of the fell. Pinning away from the stripes that needed to match helped me to keep the lines even because I could adjust as I went. Then I pulled all the top threads through the back of the bottom fell and tied them off to the bobbin thread before trimming. That way hopefully no thread pulling to the outside.

I started basting last night and will probably finish it tonight. That first line of basting at the hem proved to be a little hair raising and I ended up taking parts out and redoing several times. Hoping the following rows will be a little faster since the width is established fairly accurately now.

[David Thorpe]

Nice job! I can't get the hang of matching stripes with machine stitching, but you appear to have it mastered.

[Aspiringloser]

It doesn't have to be a centered stripe. You could have pleated to the double white stripes on black and had less of the lawn chair effect and still had a flash inside the pleats. I'm with Usonian on this one, your stitches look invisible in the pictures. I wish I could stitch my pleats with a machine and have them look as good as yours. I bet you can't make just one kilt. Keep up the good work.

[knotty]

Looks very nice. You should feel proud.

[Alan H]

I've done it....make a kilt with machine-stitching that doesn't show, but it was a lot of work and I ripped out a LOT of pleats. I first tried it on my Calfornia tartan box pleat kilt and that worked just great. However, that was 5 pleats, and i still ripped out the first two until I figured out exactly how much to offset the stripes so that the pull from the feed dogs equalled the offset I put in.

A year later I tried it with a 6 yard tartan kilt and i got it to work, but MAN that was a pain. I pinned everything to death and chalked-in stitch lines and I still had to undo about every fourth pleat. Rocky at USA kilt has this wired, maybe he'll share, if he's feeling generous.

Me? I don't think I could write out this process if I tried, it's just too complicated.

[Elf]

Yes good work. It will be exciting with the "flash" in the pleats. Look forward to a "Hamish" shot showing that. Ditto on the praise for getting the machine pleats to line up. Keep up the good work.

[gwynng]

My First Kilt update:

I was nervous about cutting the pleats out and thought the stabilizer and canvas were going to be tedious and difficult. But as it turned out to be much easier than I thought.

Some guys were wanting to see more detail on the pleats. This shot is a close up of the machine sewn pleats. I would love to figure out how to do it from the other side. After doing all the other hand sewing though may tackle hand sewn pleats one of these days.



Next the stabilizer. Barb always uses an American flag patterned fabric, so I took a cue from her and am using a fabric of my own design. (I am a licensing artist by day, so have a few fabrics that I've designed) It is sort of a way to sign your kilt!



And lastly, about half way through stitching the hair canvas. Lots of flipping from side to side to check for visible stitching and dimples. I can see that this process would be much easier working with a good, heavyweight tartan.



So these were shot a couple of days ago. I am up to pressing now. I added a little extra tailor basting to make pressing the aprons a little more smooth.

Question: I don't have a pressing ham, would a tightly rolled towel work?

[usonian]

I haven't really seen any machine-stitched kilts up close and personal, but I have to say that's some nice stitching right at the very edge of the pleats! hand-sewing is time-consuming and painstaking, but keeping everything straight and so close to the edge while sewing through several thicknesses of fabric isn't trivial either.

Question: I don't have a pressing ham, would a tightly rolled towel work?

My pressing ham is much, much firmer than I could ever roll a towel, but maybe someone else has a ham-substitution suggestion - also, I figured it was worth mentioning that you ought to be able to find a ham at a Joann fabric store - they always have 40% or 50% off coupons floating around which would drop the price to about six or seven bucks.