I have to echo what Paul Henry says. I advise people the exact opposite of what you have said. Start with quality materials if you plan on learning to sew your own kilt. That's not a recipe for disaster - it is a recipe for success. If you want to limit your financial investment your first time out, that is understandable. So maybe instead of making your first kilt out of a custom run short length of tartan from Dalgliesh, you'll want to check the "specials" pages of some of your favorite vendors to see if they have a few yards of tartan cloth on sale that you could take advantage of.

But starting with good quality wool tartan cloth woven for kilt making will make your experience so much better - and make it that much easier for you to make a decent looking kilt. I agree with everything Paul wrote about it being easier to work with. I'll also add that your end product will look much nicer at the end of the day, you'll be proud of it, and more likely to want to make more kilts.

I'd also advise NOT to start with solid cloth. Tartan is so much easier to work with - the cloth has a built-in grid on it to make sure you have everything lined up correctly. I'm actually making a solid colored kilt right now, and even though I have made over 700 kilts to date, I still find the solid ones a pain in the you-know-what to deal with. I have to be so much more careful in my measurements and end up with chalk lines all over the place to make sure everything is lining up as it should. Give me tartan to work with any day!