Nice example of pleating to the sett

[Barb T]

Although I almost always do test pinnings to send to the customer, I didn't actually do any test pleatings for this piece of tartan - it is one that simply doesn't pleat well to the stripe. The pictures and explanation below will show why it was pointless to take the time to do so. I'll also add a couple photos of test pinnings of other tartans that illustrate somewhat different points.

But let's start with the Scott. The standard choice for pleating to the stripe is to select the central stripe of one of the pivots (a pivot is a place in a symmetric tartan where the tartan sett reverses so that it is a mirror image across the pivot). In the pic below, the two annotated stripes are the pivots in the tartan. Pleats in a trad knife pleated kilt are typically 3/4"-1" across at the hips and 5/8"-3/4" at the waist. Of course this varies with the size of the sett, the shape of the person, and the amount of tartan you have, but these numbers are pretty typical. A pleat that's 7/8-1" across at the hips would have a little bit of white on each side, and that white edge would vanish as the pleat tapers toward the waist. Even if the pleat were only 3/4" at the hips, it would still leak a little bit into the white. The only way to make a pleat without the vanishing white on each side would be to have the pleat less than 3/4" at the hips. That's pretty small on a guy and would require more than 8 yards of tartan. And that's provided that you actually like the rather dull and muddy effect of pleats that only showed the dark brown and tan - the horizontal stripes would dominate, and you'd have serious lawnchair effect.



The pic below shows 5 other possibilities for pleating to the stripe. You could pick the red stripe centered in the tan, but the biggest you could make the pleats would be 1/2". You could pick the prominent yellow stripe, but to center it, the pleat couldn't be more than 1/2" across or it would leak into the white. And you'd have to like the asymmetry of the pleat (gray on one side of the yellow and brown on the other). You could also try pleating to the block, but the tan and dark brown blocks would give only 5/8" wide pleats, and the gray block only 1/2" pleats. None of these options is acceptable. About the only thing you could do would be to have a split pleat (e.g., half brown and half tan or tan with brown on one side and gray on the other).



When I pinned up options for your Maple Leaf, Forrester, I'm pretty sure that I sent you the following. It would only work if the person's shape did not require much taper from the hips to the waist. If the pleats had to taper, the edge red stripe would be lost.



And here's another pinning I did for a different customer, who asked if he could have the MacPherson pleated to the stripe. You'll see that it's certainly do-able, although I thought that the stripes felt all crammed together, particularly at the top of the kilt where the white essentially merges. He ultimately chose pleating to the sett (see post #12 above).



And last, I made a post a couple of years ago about tartans that are difficult to pleat to the stripe. You can find it here:

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-stripe-33454/