The original kilt style?

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I think that the tape is contemporary, it's certainly old but could have been added later I suppose.

The apron is shaded/narrowed by having the pleats sewn at the hip, again just at the top rather than being sewn down.

There is clearly a lot of interest in this and I 'feel' a paper coming on when I get some time.

I surprised that no-one's commented on the fact that there's only 3yds of cloth. granted, the original owner must have been slim but I doubt that even that fact would had meant the kilt worked if it had had the pleats as sewn in boxes. Matt?

Bob Martin has documented early kilts in his All About Your Kilt that had scarcely more than three yards, so that fact really didn't surprise me.

I certainly wouldn't want to make a 3 yard kilt for an average size man today! But when you consider that these early kilts usually didn't have a deep hem or a hemmed fringe on the apron, or deep reverse pleats, both of which eat up a lot of cloth, three yards suddenly sounds more possible. Especially when you factor in that many of them were not pleated to any particular pattern.

This kilt is definitely box pleated - you can see that by the layout of the pleats. As I said, the pleats are simply sewn across the top, not sewn down to the hip.

And I don't know that I would say that the kilt is pleated to no pattern at all. The fact that the first few pleats (looking from the left to right) are all pleated to the same line, and the last few pleated to a different line, does not seem accidental to me. It really looks intentional. I'm not sure what effect the maker was going for there.

And I am still interested in the concept of using the tape at the waist as a fastening system. I'm wondering how such an arrangement would work. Given that the aprons are also pleated to make them more narrow, Peter do you have the feeling that the aprons would have overlapped as in a modern kilt, or not? I can't really tell from the photos how that's supposed to work.

But a kilt like this should be fairly simple to recreate. I have made something similar to this before for reenactors, but without the binding tape closure system. If I could figure out how that was intended to work, it would be a nice thing to offer, especially since the cloth I have to work with cannot be used selvage-to-selvage and I have to come up with some way to finish off the tops of the kilts.