First Trad Kilt: an ongoing thread

[Alan H]

Alan, I just want to say this is an excellent post. Despite all your minor setbacks, you're still forging ahead full-steam, and don't worry - any setback you snag is just what anyone else would hit too. It's good for other new "tailors" to see - perhaps they'll overcome their mistakes with equal aplomb.

Andrew.

Thanks, Andrew. This is why I'm writing it. The idea is to give us "amateur" kiltmakers some insights into what another total hack (me) went through to make a traditional kilt. This will be a realistic, blow-by-blow accounting of every step every success, failure, surprise, deviation, and so on in the process. It will hopefully culminate in a picture of Yours Truly in his first, all wool, 7 yard, traditional kilt.

BTW, I have already deviated from Barb's book by joining the pieces already. Barb has you join the pieces after you stitch up a mess of pleats. Ann Stewarts article in "Threads" says the same thing. I think I'm glad I tacked it now, and not later. What if I hadn't been able to make it work?

[GMan]

I'm really enjoying this blow by blow discussion, it does bring the art of kiltmaking to the forefront.

[Barb T]

Hi guys

Yeh, Alan's got a tough tartan. It's one of those that looks superficially like it has a reasonable sett (repeat), but, when you look at it closely, you really have to go 13" across the tartan to get a full repeat. With a sett that size, it's impossible to pleat to the sett and get 25 pleats. This doesn't happen with many tartans, but it's worth looking carefully to make sure you're not stuck with one. Pleating to the stripe is the only real solution, as Alan has discovered.

As far as the 6" weft-wise and 6.5" warp-wise, this is absolutely typical of tartan. Tartan _should_ be what weavers call a "45" weave (exactly the same # of threads/inch in the warp and the weft), but that isn't what happens. Blocks are never exactly square. And the repeat is longer warp-wise (along the length of a piece of yardage). I think it probably has to do with weft-wise draw-in during the weaving process.

The issue with one half of a double width having a slightly wider sett than the other is an inexcusable problem that I've seen only a couple times in all the tartan I've bought. And I have to say I've never had one that's 3/4" different. I've dealt with 1/4" and hidden it fine, but, if I had ordered that length of tartan from a mill and discovered a 3/4" difference, I would have sent it back as unacceptable. That may be why the tartan is on e-bay to begin with.

The instructions in my book tell you to make the join after stitching the first half of the pleats, because it _is_ possible to join the fabric in a place that will show because it will wind up on the outside, rather than the inside, of a pleat, and it's easier to avoid making that mistake if you do all the pleats up to the join before you actually do the join. It's easier for a beginner to predict what will be inside a pleat and what won't if you're pleating to the stripe, so Alan's probably OK. I do commonly join the tartan before I start pleating, but I have enough experience to know where the join will come out in a pleat. Even at that, I test pin what will be the very last pleat before I spend the time doing the join, just to make sure I don't screw it up.

Alan - best of luck, and keep us posted with the blow-by-blow!!

Barb

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

I sent this question to Alan in a PM, but thought I would add it to this thread as the answer might help others. I am also making my first kilt, but not documenting it nearly as well as Alan, and have gotten to the point of deciding on the size and number of pleats. I have 33"/84cm of material to work with between the edge of the deep pleat on the left side to the edge of the box pleat on the right. My biggest problem right now is that I had decided on 12 pleats, which is giving me a total pleat size of 7cm. To cover the 22"/56cm around my backend, that works out to 4.6cm reveal with 2.4cm left over for the inner portion of the pleat. This seems like way too shallow a pleat, so I am going back through the numbers again. Seriously thinking about changing to 11 pleats, which gives me 3" for each pleat, but that would mean a reveal of 2" with 1/2" depth for the hidden portion of the pleat. Still a little shallow, but makes it easier to measure and work with. Also means fewer pleats to sew! Any thoughts? Am I going to have do (shudder!) stitch on some more fabric to make this look even half way decent?

[Barb T]

Hi KCW

Kind of depends on what you want your kilt to look like. A typical traditional kilt has 23 to 29 or more pleats with reveals in the range of 3/4"-1" and pleat depths (the hidden part) of 3.5-5". And a traditional kilt typically has on the order of 6 yards in the pleats across the back (that's over 200"!!). So, you can see that having only 33" to work with across the back is a bit of a problem if you want your kilt to look like a trad kilt. A kilt with very wide reveal and a very small depth (1/2" as you've proposed) also won't have any swing.

BTW - are you working with tartan, or plain fabric?

Barb

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

Hi KCW

Kind of depends on what you want your kilt to look like. A typical traditional kilt has 23 to 29 or more pleats with reveals in the range of 3/4"-1" and pleat depths (the hidden part) of 3.5-5". And a traditional kilt typically has on the order of 6 yards in the pleats across the back (that's over 200"!!). So, you can see that having only 33" to work with across the back is a bit of a problem if you want your kilt to look like a trad kilt. A kilt with very wide reveal and a very small depth (1/2" as you've proposed) also won't have any swing.

BTW - are you working with tartan, or plain fabric?

Barb

Barb, that is what I am fast concluding. I think that I made an initial assumption when buying the material (just over 4 yards remnant, double width) that it would be plenty for a casual "4 yard" kilt, but I was thinking the references to 4-yard, 6-yard, 8-yard kilts meant the total length of the material used in the kilt. But your comment makes me think it refers just to the material in the pleats across the back, correct? Since it was double width, I certainly have enough to cut the other half to length and stitch it together, then hide the seam in a pleat. The material is a plain fabric with a herringbone pattern. I guess I could gain a little material as well but making the first deep pleat a little less deep, but I think I would regret that based on Alan's experience, and I really would not gain much. I am thinking that since I have less than 1 yard for the pleats, I am going to have to stitch the pieces together. Just talking this through, I need to add on a little over 3 yards (3.36 or 121"). That will give me 154" for the pleats. If I make 22 pleats (my hip split is 22", so I am going to make it easy on myself), I can have a 1" reveal and a 3" depth (which takes 6" of material). I think that should give me something that looks fairly nice and has some of the look of a traditional. And before anybody says it, I will stitch on a little extra, say 130" and just trim the under apron of any excess.

BTW, here is a sample of the material: