Ancient Kilt Making Methods Revealed

[Benning Boy]

Just for you, paleobeagologists. This is so old you can't find it on the regular Internet anymore, you have to go to the Wayback Machine to find it.

http://web.archive.org/web/200703060...tsite/kilt.htm

Due to it's great age I'm guessing this is the way kilts were made way before what we now know as traditional kilt making techniques came to be.

Actually, I was prowling the XMTS archives, found a post from 2004 which linked to the above site. Of course, the link is dead, but thanks to the Wayback Machine pre-modern kilt making techniques can be yours again.

[James Hood]

Thank you for the link for hand-making a casual kilt. Rather informative and a bit entertaining as well.

Thumbs up.

[The Wizard of BC]

UM, I don't think I would consider March of 2007 as ancient.

And this is certainly not the way what what we call traditional kilts have been made since about the end of WWII. It is described in the text as a way of making a casual kilt. Casual kilts are quite recent.

Barb's book "The Art of Kiltmaking" is copyrighted well before this (2000) and is the method taught to Elsie over 60 years ago.

I think I will stick with the old method of kiltmaking.

[Barb T]

What Steve said....my co-author Elsie learned kiltmaking in Glasgow back in 1947. Not exactly the Triassic, but certainly long before 2004......

[figheadair]

Clearly the Wayback Machine author has never heard of a 4 yd box pleated kilt.

[Benning Boy]

Well, it's all relative.

Having plunged deep into the archives, and reading hundreds of pages of posts, I discovered what for me was an interesting trend. In the earliest days of XMTS, at least in the surviving records, there seemed to be scant concern with what is traditional and what is not. Only as the forum grew, and more and more new members joined did a concern with defining the meaning of traditional and codifying laws for the Kilt Kops to enforce begin to take sway. Kiltoids weren't quite so serious in those days. Also, in the early days, there is little mention of Barb's book. It, too, is referred to more and more as things moved toward the present.


So, it seemed to me that an item on kilt making from 2004 is in a way ancient lore, as it's what people were doing before the XMTS consensus on the definition of traditional began to take shape.


Thanks for the interesting comments. Anymore? The anthropologist/sociologist/research fiend in me finds this sort of thing very interesting.