Knife pleated V Box pleated

[Steve Ashton]

Harvey,

You are correct sir, I never intended to have my photos show a selvedge edge of a kilt. That has been done over and over. Many people still could not see and/or understand what they were seeing.

If you go back to where I originally posted these photos you will see a lengthy disclaimer stating that I intentionally folded the fabric before pleating and folded it with a prominent white stripe right on the edge. My intent was never to show a kilt but to illustrated only some of the ways fabric may be folded to create pleats.

I'm sorry you feel my attempt to clarify pleats cannot be relied on. I'm sure you could have done much better.

[HarveyH]

I'm sorry you feel my attempt to clarify pleats cannot be relied on. I'm sure you could have done much better.

Steve, my apologies, I think I have expressed myself badly and no, I'm not sure I could have done better. The pictures are really helpful at showing the different between the shapes of pleat. I was simply responding to KSmedic's comment that he could see from the pictures that the box pleated fabric wound up making a thinner kilt. It does, but the pictures rather exaggerate that difference.

In other words the very thing which makes the pictures really helpful at explaining the difference in the types of pleat, rather overstates the difference in thickness. That really was the only point I was trying to make.

[Domehead]

Hi Ryan - what do you plan to use the image for?

My personal research. I don't own or run any website. I do submit for Society Publications as well as Academic Research publications: specifically tartanology.
I use the MLA citation criteria, J. Gibaldi 1999. Should any of these images find their way into any of my submitions, which is highly doubtful, I'm happy to forward you the entire composition for first refusal.

Ryan

[Barb T]

Hi Ryan - just credit the source, and I'll be happy!

[Nighthawk]

Father Bill, how would you describe the swish of a box pleat? I've always worn knife-pleats.

I'll chime in an answer here- I have both a box pleated and double box pleated kilt. My box pleated kilt doesn't swing anything like a good heavy knife pleated kilt. There isn't enough weight in the fabric. However, the double box feels like it moves exactly the same as a knife pleat. I love both, and they both have their places.

[Steve Ashton]

I had a unique opportunity today to make two kilts from the same bolt of fabric.
Both are pleated to the same stripe but one is knife pleated and the other box pleated.

This should answer the question about the relative thickness of the different pleating styles.

Here is a shot of the selvedge edges of the two kilts.

[OC Richard]

The kilts of three of the five traditional kilted Scottish Highland regiments were boxpleated, and the kilts of the entire modern Scottish infantry (the Royal Regiment of Scotland) are boxpleated. Here's a Cameron Highlanders kilt





About the 'swish' or 'swing' there seems to be plenty of that in these boxpleated military kilts

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33398879@N00/6102615405/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Elsie Stuehmeyer said that when she was making kilts at Thomas Gordon & Son that boxpleated kilts and knifepleated kilts started out exactly the same: the same amount of fabric, the same system of reckoning the number and width of pleats; it wasn't until pretty far along in the kilt's making that the pleats were put into one configuration or the other. She demonstrated this on the kilt I was making, taking one of the pleats (which had been sewn but not pressed) and folding it into a box pleat.

I only bring this up because there seems to be an idea that boxpleated kilts have inherently less fabric in them.

[Barb T]

Steve and OC Richard have shown the two end members of box pleats. In the box pleated kilt that Steve shows, the underfold meets right in the middle of the back of the pleat. The more yardage you put into the kilt, the smaller the pleats and the bigger the underfold. I put together the picture below for Kilt Kamp last year to illustrate the point, which Matt Newsome made so nicely a number of years ago. Steve's pic illustrates the top pleating. OC Richard's illustrates the one at the bottom.

[OC Richard]

Barb that's a very interesting illustration. It seems likely to me that, if followed from top to bottom, the illustration shows the exact evolution that army kilts went through in the 19th century (starting in the early 19th century with four yards and ending it with eight yards).

What I wonder is: are there extant army kilts from various periods in the 19th century which display these various stages?

I surmise that the steady increase in yardage was driven by the repeatedly increasing sett size, which meant increasingly deeper pleats (the kilts always being pleated to the same line). I have a photo of a Waterloo era kilt with a tiny sett size, but by the late 19th century the sett sizes were huge.

Matt has photos of several of these, very interesting

http://kiltmaker.blogspot.com/2013/0...ox-pleats.html

[figheadair]

Barb that's a very interesting illustration. It seems likely to me that, if followed from top to bottom, the illustration shows the exact evolution that army kilts went through in the 19th century (starting in the early 19th century with four yards and ending it with eight yards).

What I wonder is: are there extant army kilts from various periods in the 19th century which display these various stages?

I am not aware of any military ones but there are a few civilian ones that show the development from the box to box-knife. This one is a 5 yard kilt c1830-40.