Just a comment about Forester Moderns post above:

the odds that an "eight yard kilt" will have exactly eight yards of fabric in it are small. I've made six "eight yard kilts"....meaning full aprons, 4-inch foldbacks for the over-apron fringe, deep kick pleats, 27 - 33 pleats in the back etc. etc and not one of them has had eight yards of material in it. Most had 7 yards and a foot or so.

The terms "eight yard kilt" and "five yard kilt" are in my humble opinion, incredibly misleading since they have almost NO relationship to the amount of cloth actually used in the kilt. All they do is indicate kilts "made with some more cloth" versus kilts "mad with some less cloth".

As I've written many times on this board, and in fact there's a post all about it, right now down in the kiltmakers subforum, the number of pleats, depth of pleats etc. etc depends on three things.

size of the guy wearing the kilt

size of the sett

amount of tartan used

If you try to make a kilt with eight yards of material in it to go around someone with a 32 inch waist and 36 inch hips, you're going to waste masses of material, or you're going to make tiny, tiny pleat reveals and the truth is that a pleat reveal less than 1/2 an inch just simply doesn't look that great. Besides, you're throwing away money in labor and fabric.

About Leprechaun-91's assertion that the kilt is the equivalent of blue jeans....well, he has a point, doesn't he? There are also people on this board who will violently disagree with his outlook. The upshot, pricekolob, is that you have to decide for yourself.

PERSONALLY......and this is just me, I would say to save your pennies and buy a nice "5-yard" *gag* machine-sewn kilt made out of nice wool tartan when you can. Wear it with pride and confidence, and quit worrying about what other people think about your choice of kilts.

Now, you've gathered data and had fifteen guys tell you what to do and where to buy etc. etc. The time is coming when you should stop asking....and start DOING, when you have the $$ resources.