I could have put this in DYI, but I thought it a good fit here, as well. I wanted to show you a photo of a kilt I've been working on.


This was in the beginning stages when I was just chalking out and pinning up the pleats.

I love working with these old traditional tartans, especially the ones based on the old blue/black/green motif (which includes all the Black Watch variations, as well as simpler tartans such as MacKay and Gunn). The reason being is that these tartans seem to be designed with making traditional box pleated kilts in mind.

In a traditional four yard box pleated kilt, the pleat width is typicaly going to be approximately 1/3 of the total sett size.

In tartans such as these, very often the pattern itself neatly divides itself into thirds.

Now, we must also keep in mind that the original tailored kilts, as we see in the 1790s and very early 1800s, did not make any allowance for waist/hip ratio -- the pleats were sewn straight up with no taper.

What this effectively means then is that the kilt maker has the pleats already marked out for him in the pattern of the tartan itself.

In the case of the above kilt, the gentleman for whom it was being made had a waist size close enough to his hip size that tapering in the pleats was not required. So these pleats are sewn straight up, just as they would have been in the 1790s. And the green portion of this tartan is exactly 1/3 the size of the sett.

It was a joy to mark out the pleats because I could just simply follow the lines in the tartan. It is as if the tartan is telling me how it wants to be pleated!