First Trad Kilt: an ongoing thread

[Alan H]

OK, I bought Barb's book. I"ve read through most of it, now. Some parts I've read twice, or even three times. I'm not going to count that in the running total I spent in making the kilt.

KILT PLANNING: 3 hours

I spent about a half hour closely inspecting the fabric. That's when I realized that the sett repeated every TWO "sort-of-setts". I was pretty upset, as I wanted to pleat to the sett, but there's just no way with this tartan. I measured the black line that defines the "sort-of-sett" size, and that I could use to pleat to the stripe, and I got 6 inches.

What I didn't realize, and didn't find out until the next day was that this line doesn't define a square. This line defines a box that's 6 inches along the width of the tartan and 6.5 inches along the length. So I did all the calculations assuming a 6-inch sett. ARRRRGH. When I got it on the floorr....well, we'll get to that.

I re-measured myself to make SURE I knew what the measurements were. Well, DANG, I seem to have grown in the past four months, because my waist measured at 41 (not 40) and my butt at 46 (not 44). Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Good thing I Measured.

OK, I did the apron/pleats, waist/hips splits that Barb guides you through. My Waist splits are 21 apron/20 pleats....My Hip splits are 22 apron/24 pleats

OK I wanted a kilt with around 20-25 pleats in it. I did all the calculations assuming a 6 inch sett and came up with a value around 6 yards to make myself a nice kilt with 22 pleats. I worked it all out for a 5 yard, a 6 yard a 6.66 yard and a 7 yard kilt and settled on the 6 yard.

All of the above took me about 3 hours.