Alan H- you reminded me of something funny- my sister ironing Velcro on a jacket to 'straighten it out' and ending up with a melted puddle of plastic years ago.

I modeled my kilt after an Amerikilt, doing many of the same things, figuring out the construction, adding a couple things I wanted in, etc. I'll try to tell how I made it in case you're interested.

The way I made my kilt (which had a waistband) was to sew the pleats in the fabric using the selvedge as the hem. I double-rolled one end to serve as an apron- that means I sewed down the edge, then folded that seam over and sewed it again to stop any of the fabric from unraveling and give the edge some weight. Twelve inches of fabric followed for the apron. Then I started my pleating, using a three/one knife pleat that was two inches deep. So every pleat took six inches of fabric- two for the top, two for the zigzag in the middle, and two for the bottom. Once I had enough pleats that I was ten inches or so away from the waist size I wanted, I stopped pleating- that would be the part that went under the apron.

I cut a long piece for the waistband, the length of the kilt plus a couple inches. Then I (should have) sewed the velcro stips on the inside and outside ends and sewed the ends down on themselves*. I laid out the strip across the kilt, and pinned it to the inside of the kilt with the raw edge parallel with the top of the pleats. So now the strip that will be my waistband is basically flipped inside the kilt. I made a seam about a half inch from the top.

I then pulled that up, so now the waistband is flipped up, and the inside raw edge is hidden by the seam. That way the fabric won't ravel or shed against a shirt. I carefully ironed the other long side of the strip down about a half inch, and ironed the strip slightly more than in half lengthwise, so that the fold I had just ironed down sat on top of the kilt's pleats on the outside and under the fold/seam inside.

I made belt loops out of tubes of fabric, and pinned them around the top of the kilt, so about a half inch of tube came down from the top of the band, and sewed them down with an X in a box method my machine has programmed into it- you could probably get away with just sewing a line across near the top of the band, but I like to make sure things stay put. Then I folded down the tube, folded the other end inside, and pinned it to the bottom of the band, to be sewn down in the next step.

Anyway, I then topstitched over the band's bottom fold, all the way around, with a seam slightly below the inside seam. That way I wasn't trying to sew through seven layers of fabric at once, only five. Except for the belt loops. Gah. It takes a helluvalotta pins, luckily I have a nice magnetic pin catcher on my machine.

Also- when making a waistband, take that into consideration when figuring the length of the kilt. I had to trim a little off the top of the pleats to get the right length with a 2 1/2 inch waistband. I'd recommend cutting after you've done all the pleating, not before, it never hurts to have a little insurance fabric out there.


*Alan's right, it is a pain in the toosh to sew them on after