Deciding how to pleat a kilt

[jsrnephdoc]

For the customer, double width just means there will be a join hidden in a middle pleat. Not a big deal at all. For the kilt maker, there's no ideal way to join two halves of a double width asymmetrical tartan. For this reason, it's typical for asymmetrical tartans to be woven in single width.

Exposes how little I know (and how little I STILL understand): doesn't double width just mean a "canvas" of the same pattern, twice as wide? In other words, why would a piece of fabric twice as wide have to be sewn together, whereas one half that width would not?

Another question: why is single width fabric MORE expensive? My previous guess (based on no INFORMATION whatsoever) was that single width looms were more "historical antiques" and required much more maintenance, but I do think I remember reading somewhere that they were more easily coaxed into creating fabric with herringbone selvedge at one extreme or the other.

(When USA Kilt's Rocky Roeger asked the managers of Lochcarron and House of Edgar one thing they each thought their house did "better" than the other, the HoE guy answered immediately "we do a whole LOT of single width cloth)."

[User]

Exposes how little I know (and how little I STILL understand): doesn't double width just mean a "canvas" of the same pattern, twice as wide? In other words, why would a piece of fabric twice as wide have to be sewn together, whereas one half that width would not?
...

Your understanding of double width is correct.

If I want to make one 8 yard kilt, I don't buy 8 yards of double width fabric, because I'll have too much. Instead I buy 4 yards of double width, rip it in half, and join the halves. That's where the seam comes from, but you hide it in a pleat.

If I'm making two 8 yard kilts from the same tartan, then I can buy 8 yards of double width, rip it in half, and use each half to make a kilt without the need to join them.

I could only venture guesses at your other question.

[OC Richard]

I buy 4 yards of double width, rip it in half...

This ripping, by the way, is terrifying to watch.

[OC Richard]

I learned that Barb Tewksbury still does an annual 1 week long mid-spring kilting academy in Upstate NY where a student may come in with little prior experience but enough cloth to emerge 1 week later with a handsewn kilt.

I highly recommend that you attend that if you possibly can.

I attended just such a class given by her Art Of Kilt Making co-author Elsie Scott-Stuehmeyer.

It was amazing. You'll learn more about kilts from a week of hands-on doing than you could from any amount of talking about them. Suddenly everything unclear and mysterious will be understood.

[OC Richard]

But, pleating to the white stripe probably wouldn't "pop" as much as one might like because of the large sett size?

You wouldn't pleat to the white lines because they're too far apart (12 inches).

If you wanted the white line to appear on every pleat, and you wanted the kilt to have the normal number and width of pleats, you'd have twice as much cloth used up in the rear of the kilt, which would be really heavy.

You'd want to either alternate white and red lines, or chose a single feature that occurs every 6 inches (red line, blue block, green block, black block).

[jsrnephdoc]

You wouldn't pleat to the white lines because they're too far apart (12 inches).

If you wanted the white line to appear on every pleat, and you wanted the kilt to have the normal number and width of pleats, you'd have twice as much cloth used up in the rear of the kilt, which would be really heavy.

You'd want to either alternate white and red lines, or chose a single feature that occurs every 6 inches (red line, blue block, green block, black block).

I was envisioning the white stripe being prominent HORIZONTALLY. It does "happen" on my kilt, because it's pleated to the sett, but it doesn't in any way stand out different from the front.

[jsrnephdoc]

I highly recommend that you attend that if you possibly can.

I attended just such a class given by her Art Of Kilt Making co-author Elsie Scott-Stuehmeyer.

It was amazing. You'll learn more about kilts from a week of hands-on doing than you could from any amount of talking about them. Suddenly everything unclear and mysterious will be understood.

I had no idea while I was accumululating my first few kilts that she lived just a few miles away from me in Petaluma. I think she's no longer with us, sadly.