Pleating to the stripe but which stripe

[Nemuragh]

I guess it depends on a number of factors including the width/number of pleats and the effect you are looking for. I quite like pleating to the stripe, but I would go to the black stripe with the two blue tracings. If you were going to pleat to the blue block you could end up with what some refer to as the lawnchair effect... or if you went with fewer pleats and made the pleat wide enough to show the yellow and white stripes on either side, they you might have the problem of "arrows" at the top of your pleats; where elements of the tartan disappear as the pleat narrows.

Hope this is helpful.

I think the interesting thing about pleating to the stripe is that, in effect, it creates a new tartan from selected parts of the old. I like the dramatic difference between the front and the back that the wide, blue stripe creates. However, there needs to be a strong vertical element to avoid the deck chair effect that you mention. The additional yellow and white stripes would do this but then there is the problem of spears possibly ending halfway up the kilt. I wonder if that would be a problem if they were made that way, neatly - an unconventional solution, I admit. I would foresee difficulty in persuading a kiltmaker to do that, however.

Perhaps a (slightly) more conventional solution would be to have a fairly wide pleat on a box pleated kilt. This tartan seems to lend itself to that treatment. It would also facilitate the flashes of red from the middle of the sett revealed as the pleats move. Unfortunately, Kiltmakers here don’t seem to offer box pleats as a rule.

Lady Chrystel’s double box pleat is an ingenious solution that would seem likely to work, too.