Quote Originally Posted by Arlen View Post
With all due respect, a friend of mine is a tailor for his regiment and regularly blind hems regimental Kilts for the folk who are simply too short for moving the buckles to work. His official guidelines state that since the Kilts are often passed on to other lads it is better to do a blind hem that can be taken down later than to cut length from the top and leave the kilt useable only to a small percent of the regiment in the future.

I've seen his work and even with my very critical eye there's not a hint of pleats splaying or anything that looks different from the usual selvage.
Would he be the tailor for the RRS, or another Scottish regt of some other CW country? If the former, I would be interested to see any pics if possible of a hemmed military box pleat kilt (the subject of the OP's post), or of any hemmed military kilt if the latter.


Quote Originally Posted by Barb T. View Post
I have hemmed many kilts. If it is done properly, it can't be seen from 5' away, let alone from across the parade ground...

...The main difference for a set of kilts (such as band kilts) is that, with a hem, the part of the sett at the bottom of the kilt is not the same because you've turned up the bottom (provided, of course, that all the tartan was woven the same way in the first place). It's not the hem that shows, it's the difference in the part of the sett at the bottom of the kilt.
Not to speak for Seaforth Piper, but from across the parade ground (aka "meat grinder") one can tell if a military kilt has been hemmed (badly or not) solely for this reason as the sett on military kilts are a proscribed distance from the selvedge.

Similarily, one can also discern a WPG reproduction kilt at a distance by the same method as all the setts on WPG kilts I have seen were not woven at the proscribed distance, rather they will often vary in distance from kilt to kilt of the same sett as can be seen from pics both here on this forum and elsewhere.

From a military perspective, I would tend to agree w/ Seaforth Piper that variances as such doesn't look good on parade where everyone is to be uniform.


BTW, in case Arlen doesn't have any available pics, does anyone here have any pics of a hemmed military kilt w/ box pleats? Or even knife for that matter...