contemporary box pleat kilt: an ongoing thread

[Rex_Tremende]

Jasons measurements are: waist:33, rump: 40, Drop: 23
Dans measurements are: waist: 43, rump: 45, Drop 24
... what's this with his butt measurement only 2 inches bigger than his gut?

Jason is single and Dan is married, you say?

Hmm...

[Alan H]

Jason is single and Dan is married, you say?

Hmm...

That's pretty funny...I got a good laugh out of that when I read it. *grin*

Just for reference, the first kilt I made was a caramel canvas kilt. I had no clue what I was doing, basically I just stared at one of Rocky's Casuals and imitated that. The only differences between mine and a USA Kilts casual were that I put in a reverse pleat and I fringed the over-apron edge. I had no clue what to do with tapering the fell, or anything. In fact, I should have sewn downthe fell about another 2 inches longer than I did, but what the heck. It took me 19 hours of flying by the seat of my kilt (ha!) to make that garment.

I then made a completely traditional, essentially entirely hand-sewn wool kilt that has 27 pleats, plus the reverse pleat. I followed Barbs instructions closely. The only significant difference between what Barb has you do, and what I did is that I made a "Matt Newsome Special" INSIDE buckle on the left side of the kilt, instead of the usual "strap through the slit in the waistband" left-side closure. Personally, I am sold on this method, and way2fractious used it on his box-pleat kilt with great success, too. The hand-sewn traditional took me 67 hours to construct.

I'm hoping to bang out these box pleat contemporaries, minus pockets, in about 18 hours for two kilts....or nine hours each. We'll see.

[Alan H]

I've decided on a slight change of focus for this project. Aftr I make these two, I'm going to take what I've learned and make two more. I'll take pics of the process, write it up and build a website, and put a .pdf file of the whole thing there for download.

The X-Kilt
MAKE YOUR OWN KILT; FOR THE COMPLEAT IDJIT

The goal is to develop the easiest-possible-to-sew-yourself contemporary kilt, without swiping too much of anything from any of our professional kiltmakers. The more I think about it, the box-pleat, narrow apron kilt fills this bill admirably.

[Southern Breeze]

Great thread thus far.

A quick question - is the bulk of the sewing being done by machine?

[Alan H]

Great thread thus far.

A quick question - is the bulk of the sewing being done by machine?

Yes, essentially ALL of it will be done by machine. There might be a few bits and pieces that will have to be done by hand, but I'm trying to minimize that.

I've been on vacation for 5 days, so I'll be back to work on the first-run of the "X-Kilt" tomorrow morning.

[Southern Breeze]

Yes, essentially ALL of it will be done by machine. There might be a few bits and pieces that will have to be done by hand, but I'm trying to minimize that.

I've been on vacation for 5 days, so I'll be back to work on the first-run of the "X-Kilt" tomorrow morning.

Thanks. I was 99% sure that was how you were doing it. That 1% reminded me not to make any assumptions.

[Alan H]

OK did some more work yesterday. Here's what I did.

Sewed half of the velcro onto the inner side of the over-apron on both kilts.

Finished (two lines of stitching) the right hand edge of the over-apron on both kilts. Actually one of them got three lines of stitching.

Hemmed both kilts..

Total time....about 3 hours.

So now I'm into it a total of about 7.75 hours.

I also put in about two hours writing up instructions on how to make this kilt for the Compleat Idjit. I'm about a third of the way into the writing of the manual. I now have a digital camera with which to take pics, (thanks KCW!) so I'll illustrate the manual with pictures.