black denim kilt underway

**Aspiringloser** · 20th December 11, 03:46 PM

Their PV is nice. I wish I'd known about it when I made my first attempt. I'm still working my way up to all the 16 oz. wool I have. I'd rather make my mistakes on the lesser expensive fabric.

**usonian** · 13th January 12, 09:56 AM

It's been a banner week here - progress on the practice kilt has stalled due to holiday and post-holiday craziness, but I received some 13 oz wool tartan swatches from House of Edgar, and my order from Marton Mills arrived just this morning - I wound up splurging and getting 16 oz wool for a tank. Even with the hefty shipping cost, the cost per double-width meter is still pretty hard to beat, So, I think this is going to light the fire under my butt to get back to the practice kilt.

But what I wanted to mention here was how the wool weights compare to the denim, because I thought it was very interesting and could help others thinking of going the denim route.

The 13 oz wool House of Edgar tartan feels a good bit lighter than the 10 oz denim; it's thinner and has quite a bit more drape. Without actually weighing them for comparison I'm not sure if the wool fiber is just that much more dense than cotton, or if the metric used to determine the denim weight is different.

The 16 oz wool from Marton Mills feels closer in weight to the 10 oz denim (still a little bit lighter) but it has a lot more drape to it. The denim is really stiff compared to both. Had I gone shopping for a canvas/denim material with wool swatches in hand, I would have gone for something lighter.

**Emmet** · 13th January 12, 11:18 AM

I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I just got myself some denim and am debating which style to go with it.

**GoodGirlGonePlaid** · 13th January 12, 12:10 PM

Ahhhhhhh, now I totally want that alt.kilt black denim kilt-skirt!!
Looks good!

**Spartan Tartan** · 13th January 12, 02:00 PM

Looks great so far. I am interested to see the final product. Keep us posted (lol, pun intended).

**usonian** · 7th April 12, 07:06 AM

I was making good progress on my practice kilt until I got distracted by the holidays, and various other projects. I've finally shaken off the inertia and gotten back to it. When I left off I had finished sewing the pleats, but that was about it. The other night I got as far as basting the pleats and tacking the inverted pleat down.

You can see how I completely mangled the join - I miscalculated where to place it (solid color = harder to find reference points) and the denim was uncooperative when it came to making a flat-felled seam. We'll see how it looks after pressing; the actual seam is still more or less hidden, so with a bit of smoothing and the solid black color, I expect I'll be able to live with it. Not as easy to see in this photo is how my fell line got out of whack because my pleats started to skew as I sewed (once again - solid color making it more difficult to keep things straight than the built-in grid of a tartan) but overall, I'm happy enough with it; it looks quite a bit better with the pleats basted.

Hindsight being 20/20, were I to start my first kilt over I would have spent the extra money and started with PV. Nevertheless, I feel like I've finally turned the corner on this one and hope to finish it up soon.

**Aspiringloser** · 7th April 12, 08:59 AM

On my last one, where there was a solid color pleat, I drew in a center line with a chalk pencil. I also drew my taper lines to prevent wandering edges or off center center elements. This wouldn't be so obvious on a solid color kilt since there are no stripes to be off center.

**NeightRG** · 7th April 12, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by Aspiringloser

On my last one, where there was a solid color pleat, I drew in a center line with a chalk pencil. I also drew my taper lines to prevent wandering edges or off center center elements. This wouldn't be so obvious on a solid color kilt since there are no stripes to be off center.

While it may not seem it would be obvious, you'd be surprised - one of my earlier kilts (the one in my profile picture, actually) was solid grey. One of the pleats was a little off, then the next was off a little more, and the next a little more, and so on... When you look at the back side of the kilt, there's a definite "twist" effect in the fell. The next time that I make a self-colour kilt, I'll be marking center lines for each pleat with a carpenter's square.

**Aspiringloser** · 7th April 12, 05:41 PM

I marked a center line then put a square on that line. I then took another straight edge and drew the diagonal line from bottom of the fell to the waistline. The pleats that had a central stripe or color boundary I just put my square on that. If you draw a straight line on skewed fabric, when the fabric is straight, the line will then be skewed. I got tired of lining everything up and then having the pleat come out wrong after stitching it so I decided to try my line method. I will continue using this method until my skills improve or until infinity.