Quote Originally Posted by xman View Post
Before
waist - 17.5" - split - apron 9", pleats 8.5"
hips - 19.5" - 9.5" apron, 10" pleats

Now
19.5" waist; 21" hips
I should say that I've taken Steve's advice and put two fingers in the tape. What I meant by my last post was that this STILL seems inadequate.

Now that's tough because I've now got 22 pleats including those that will be hidden, 20 with full deep and reverse pleats. Pleats are five and a half 'plus' at the hips and four and a half 'plus' at the waist. I'm going to go with either eighteen or twenty pleats for now and hide the rest. The apron is currently 10.375(3/8) at at the waist and 10.875(7/8) at the hips.
So I'm still trying to figure out why accurate measurements would still seem inadequate, and I'm still having a tough time figuring out how big the kilt actually is. It's not clear to me what you mean by having 22 pleats, some of which are hidden. Are the extra 2 pleats the deep pleat and the inverted pleat? If so, they don't matter in terms of sizing, so you shouldn't count them in your measurements. And I don't know what you mean by "doing 18 or 20 pleats and hiding the rest". Can you show a picture??

Anyway, here's what I need in order to help you:

1) If you lay out the kilt, without stretching it, and measure from the right hand edge of the underapron where it is stitched to meet the pleats, across the pleats, to the left edge of the apron where it is stitched to meet the pleats (i.e., not measuring either the deep pleat or the inverted pleat, which don't add anything to the circumference of the kilt), how many inches across is that (without stretching) at the hips? What about at the waist?

2) If you measure from the left edge of the apron where it meets the pleats across the apron to the apron edge chalk mark, how many inches is that at the hips? What about at the waist?

3) If you add those to #s together, they need to equal 20.5" at the waist and 22" at the hips in order for the kilt is to fit perfectly at his current size (i.e., be neither too big nor too small). This is an inch more than his actual measurements (at his current size), because you add an extra inch to the right apron edge to make sure that the fringe covers the underapron.

Can you tell me what the numbers are from 1 and 2 above, and I can see if I can help you? I can't figure out the measurements you've given me, because 5 1/2" plus at the hips across the pleats can't possibly be right. Even if you split the hip measurement evenly (21" divided by 2), the pleats would have to be 10 1/2" across at the hips, and the apron would have to be 11 1/2" across at the hips. If you did an uneven split, the pleats at the hips would need 11" and the apron 11". And that would be laid out to the current measurements with nothing to spare.


I'm starting to feel like I should just work in metric. We're kind of stuck between the two systems here in Canuckistan.
I honestly don't think this is the problem. It shouldn't matter whether you measure in ells or smoots or potrzebies.