I'm making my first kilt, working from Alan H's x kilt instructions. If I can follow them, they must be okay. I started Friday, with a trip to the local fabric store, where I was the only man who wasn't an accompanying husband, and one of the few people less than 60. I picked up a piece of khaki poly-cotton twill. I only bought four yards, I should have bought 4.5 or 5. (Four is enough for my 44 inch rump, but the waistband and pockets are going to have to come from the other half, so it's not enough to make two from.)
Here's the fabric, after washing and cutting it to width:

It's wound around the traditional kiltmaking tool, a snow shovel handle. (I knew I was saving it for something!)
One thing I'm doing differently from Alan's instructions is that instead of cutting the fabric to length, I've left an inch or inch and half allowance at the waistband. I had plenty of fabric width (60" wide, 24" drop), and it's made a number of steps easier. I scribed a line for the waistband and the fell, and have used those for reference. The lines don't show up well in this pic, but they're there

at this point, I've pinned the outside edges of about half the pleats, in preperation for edge stitching them.
That was a pain, but it turned out okay, and I only had to rip out three or four of them. (Note to self: don't try and put in 1mm stitches!)


I've bar tacked all the pleats in place, but I don't have a picture of that.