Quote Originally Posted by turpin View Post
It looks like she tapered on th eoutside only for the triple yellow stripe. Wool should have enough give to allow for that by putting a teeny bit extra taper in all the other pleats. Of course, I may be all wrong, but for the yellow that looks like the onliest way.
Not entirely sure what Phil meant by his original question, but let me take a stab at it. As Turpin says, wool is very "shapable". If you're making a pleat with a central stripe, color boundary, or a solid color, both sides of the pleat are tapered, and both edges cross the straight grain of the fabric at a shallow angle. If you're making a pleat that has a stripe along one edge (such as the narrow center yellow stripe in the pics on page 1), then that edge is parallel to the straight grain and all of the taper is taken up along the other edge, which will lie at an angle to the straight grain of the fabric. It all gets flattened out in the pressing.

In general, you'd choose to put a stripe (or set of stripes) along one edge rather than in the center of a pleat so that you can put all the taper on the other side of the pleat in the adjacent color block so that you don't lose stripes as the pleat tapers.

Phil - does that answer your question?

B