A tapering nightmare.

[Barb T]

A trad kilt can, in fact, be made with that much taper and no darts - in fact, if you're making a trad kilt, you should never put darts in. A kilt skirt can have darts, but they do show dramatically. I personally don't like the look of darts even in a kilt skirt, because they distort the tartan so much. And since they aren't necessary, why put them in?

I've made kilts (without darts) for women with even more taper than you're describing (17" to be exact). The trick is to divide it between the apron and pleats, not putting more than 5-6" of the taper in the apron. That leaves 9-10" of taper in the pleats. I don't know how many pleats you'll have with the amount of tartan you've got, so I can't advise you much more than that. But, just pin the pleat at the right width at the hips (bottom of the fell), and again at the right width at the waist. Pin liberally in between to hold the taper, and make sure that you _don't_ continue the taper about the waist pin if you have a rise. Because you're working with wool, you can stretch and press the wool nice and flat when you're done, even though you have many folds that aren't parallel to the straight grain.

BTW folks - the fell is the entire stitched portion of the pleats, not just the bottom of the stitched portion.

Barb