Xkilt Fabric Questions

[sydnie7]

JoAnn has a line called Target (huh?) that is marginally acceptable in terms of weight. It's currently on sale, here, for $3.99/yard which makes it an even better bet for your first attempt!

[federkeil]

I cant speak for ripstop but I have recently made a kilt from lightweight breathable nylon for running. Here is the thread on it.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...ng-kilt-74086/

With any nylon fabric you have to consider weight as your main factor. Ripstop wont have any stretch to speak of but it will be lighter weight than many PV or wool fabrics. This creates a couple issues, skirting of the kilt and pleats. When I say skirting I mean that the pleats will poof up or skirt up due to the fact they dont have the weight of 13-16zo fabric. This can be overcome somewhat, as I did, by sewing the pleats to the hips. I dont know how Xkilts are pleated but I did my kilt in a lightweight fabric using standard kilt making style. The other issue is pleats actually staying pressed. Nylon doesnt press out like other fabrics so I top stitched the pleat in to keep it pleated and crisp. The pleats lay down nicely and have a good swish even for a very light material.

I think ripstop could be use you just have to look at your application and what you want from it. Hope this helps a bit, there are kilt makers here much more experienced than me. Im just giving you an idea of the issues I had making my running kilt. Best of luck.....

The original Xkilt tutorial is a box pleat but members have adapted it to knife and kingussie pleats. They have sewn down pleats so I'm not worried about the fabric holding a crease any longer than it takes to sew it. For use I was thinking along the lines of warm/hot weather hiking, a fabric that wouldn't get weighed down in water and dry quickly.

JoAnn has a line called Target (huh?) that is marginally acceptable in terms of weight. It's currently on sale, here, for $3.99/yard which makes it an even better bet for your first attempt!

This would be for my second Xkilt, the first one I used what poly/cotton I could get locally which is light weight. I don't know the actual weight but it's a lighter fabric than an Original Utilikilt, which is 8.5oz poly/cotton.