Hey Doug, you'll be tackling 8 yards in no time at all. You start off thinking five yards is a lot to tackle and then it begins to seem rather skimpy.

If you can get pleats from one hip joint around to the other, and the aprons with double sized pleats under them it will sometimes feel like you forgot to put a kilt on as it will move as you do.

You think you have it bad? Try being a full figured woman - here in the UK, anyway - the assumed garb is a navy blue tube in a manmade fibre with three quarter sleeves and a bit of white around the neck. A waist - forget it. large women are not suposed to have waists.

When working on my kilts I tend to make the two aprons and then pleat up everything in between to use up all the material. I tend to have twenty pleats in most things, it being easy to divide by ten I just measure up the available cloth, divide by two and then by ten - TAA DAAAH!!

I round down slightly and put the left over cloth in the larger pleats, or rather into pleats to make them larger, because otherwise they would be the same size as the other ones.....

I am just starting on a new kilt of blue DPM - I have one in 'ordinary' colours but it is actually starting to look weathered I have worn it/washed it so much.

I must refurbish some of my kilts from last year - now too large - so as to have more to wear. One is not enough!!