X Marks Tartan Material: getting down to brass tacks

[Alan H]

I did some calculations the other night about these. Here they are:

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the X Marks tartan has a 9-inch sett. I double-checked with Matt, and that's close enough as make no difference.

OK, a standard kife pleat kilt has somehwere between 18-36 pleats 'round your bum. I'm going to call it twenty for reasons you'll see, shortly.

I have a 40 inch waist. OK, how much material do I need?

>>>about 26 inches for the front apron...the extra 6 is to allow for fringe and the A-shaping of the apron.
>>>about 20 inches for the inner apron.
>>>about 6 inches for the reverse pleat
>>>about 6 inches for the kick pleat

OK how about all those pleats 'round the back?

If my waist is 40 inches, then the aprons will cover 20 inches of that and the pleats will cover 20 inches. If I pleat to the sett and have 1 inch of each pleat "show" then each pleat, total will take 10 inches..... 9 inches for the sett and one more that "shows.

OK, if 1 inch "shows" then that means I'm talking about 20 pleats 'round me bum.

20 pleats x 10 inches per pleat = 200 inches.

26 + 20 + 6 + 6 + 200 = 258

So I need a bare minmum of 258 inches of tartan to make my kilt. 258 / 36 = 7.166 yards or about 7 and a sixth yard. Call it seven and a third to round it off. 7.33 yards. That's seven yards and one foot of cloth to make my neato X Marks kilt.

OK, the fabric is double width so in fact I need half of that, meaning about 3.66 yards. That's three yards and two feet. Oh, heck, just buy four yards of the stuff and have some left over for some belt loops and maybe a tie.

So for me to buy enought custom weave tartan for a knife-pleated kilt, that will be around $270 for the cloth. If I buy it from the X Marks representative who is hopefully handling the N. Bately stuff for $45 a meter (close enough to a yard) the material will cost me **about** $180 for my knife-pleated kilt. If X Marks goes with the Fraser and Kirkbright material, it will cost me something on the order of $192.

NOTE: none of these include shipping from either the custom weaver or the X Marks saint in Canada who's volunteered to help us out, here. NOTE no. 2. If your waist is bigger than mine, it will cost more. If your waist is smaller than mine, it will cost less. NOTE no. 3 I can't make a "four-yard kilt" out of this stuff unless I pleat it to "nothing" (as M.A.C. Newsome has explained early civilian kilts were often pleated) or get it made into a box-pleated kilt. Well, OK, you could knife-pleat it and only have 6-7 pleats that showed three inches of material, but that's not much like any sort of traditional kilt. OK...that depends on what you want to call "tradition". Anyway, the 9-inch sett requires that the pleats be very deep. The 9-inch sett divides handily into thirds, which is three inches, each.

I'm open to having any of my errors pointed out to me in this scenario, believe me!!! If I goofed, let me know. Incidentally, the "pleat to stripe" pics that I posted the other day aren't very accurate, I'm afraid.