Quote Originally Posted by meinfs View Post
One personal approach that I take was to find a natural line (two lines) on the tartan to use as the edges of the pleat on both sides (or rather both edges) of the major tripe that I want to pleat it to.
Just a quick note - this approach only works if you don't have any pleat taper. If the pleat has to taper at all toward the waist, you lose the edge stripes toward the top of the pleat, and it doesn't look very good.

Instead of deciding at the start how many pleats you want, start with what pleat size you want.
I absolutely agree with this. I never know how many pleats a kilt is going to have until I figure out where I want each pleat relative to the tartan sett and then lay it out and count how many pleats I have.