Adventures with my first Box Pleat Kilt

[gwynng]

In a recent post I asked the rabble to help ID a 2 yard length of tartan I had gotten. It seemed vintage and the low price (at a church rummage sale) was such that it seemed worth trying a 4 yard kilt. Turns out it was Fraser Hunting (and had a more weathered or ancient feel). The original post is here:

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-tartan-79893/

This weekend I started the kilt, so wanted to do shots of its progress. I was doing a box pleat kilt, my first, which seemed the best model to try with only 4 yards of fabric. First I needed to decide the stripe for the pleats. I saw three options:



Initially I thought the red stripe would be it for sure. But upon laying it out for a test, it didn't really hold much interest because it had very little pop.



The white stripe seemed to work a lot better.



I really liked the blue-grey stripes as my pleat center, but very quickly found that since they were not "center" stripes in the sett, that is was difficult to figure out the centering inside the box pleat. It didn't seem to center on a distinctive place in the sett, so opted for the the white stripe, which centered very easily.

Following the instructions from the the Box Pleat supplement to TAoK, I set off. What I found quickly was that after making a couple of knife pleat kilts, the process seemed to go a lot more smoothly.

AND box pleat kilts ROCK because I only had nine pleats to sew! The bummer was that the tartan had a less than perfect selvage so would require hemming.

More to come...

[Richrail]

Can't wait to see the finished product.

[gwynng]

The pleats went fairly quickly. The geometry of figuring out the number of pleats, allowances for the aprons, the inverse and deep pleats took a little more brain power than a knife pleat kilt. But then again, this is my first box. Though a Yank, I also use the metric system for measuring and calculating pleats. So much easier!

I have made pleat templates for my previous kilts to help with the constant measuring and re-measuring while pleating. Did the same for this one and found a couple of handy tricks about pleat 6 or so. First of all, I use pins...lots when I pleat. It seems to help me keep things lined up in the tartan. Second when I am placing the template, I always have to move it back and forth between the pleat getting ready to be sewn and the next pleat that was down the road. For this box pleat, I found that I could measure w/ the template, place a pin on the far edges of the template, then move it to the center of the NEXT (future) pleat and mark the close edge of the template the same way. That way when I folded the tartan, the pleats were pretty much matched up and ready to sew. I know this isn't exactly the way it is done in TAoK, but seems to work for me. Not sure it would work for a knife pleat kilt, but think it would if you are pleating to the stripe.



Here are the finished pleats. Note there are a lot of pins which are to hold the boxes in place before you baste the pleats. The pins do cause a little wobbling in the stripe. This is after the quick steam press of the fell only. Now on to pleat basting.

[Father Bill]

Lovely work! I like your choice of pleats.

[Tartan Tess]

It looks great. I like the tartan.

[Aspiringloser]

Would it have been possible to box pleat this to the sett or did you even consider the sett? I think it turned out great, just curious about the sett. Keep the pictures coming.

[gwynng]

Would it have been possible to box pleat this to the sett or did you even consider the sett? I think it turned out great, just curious about the sett. Keep the pictures coming.

Yes, it would have been possible to pleat to the sett, but since most of my kilts are pleated to the sett, I thought that the stripe rounded out my wardrobe better. And it looked "boxier" if that makes sense. Actually may have been a couple of less pleats too had I done it that way.

[JohntheBiker]

Pleating to the white stripe certainly looks like the right choice. I think that you'll really like the box-pleated kilt. The one I have is certainly a favourite.

[Elf]

I will echo the approbation for pleating to the while stripe. I also like how the red apears to be peaking out from underneath. Eager to see how it goes from here. Best wishes

[gwynng]

The hemming is done, it took two and a half full episodes of the PBS "Manor House Series" but it is now behind me. Never again! (until my next kilt w/o a good selvage)

I was basting the pleats and had finished the ones closest to hem, and readied to start the next set. On the second row of basting I had everything so neatly aligned for 4 pleats and was just about to move to the next few and was thinking "too bad I have to move this now because everything is all lined up so well." SH-KONK! It hit me. I have needles, I have basting thread. Do the other sets of basting now that it is all lined up - move to the next few pleats and do the same.

It worked perfectly and saved multiple lining up of the pleats over and over. Here's how the process looked:



And finally basted like a Thanksgiving turkey!