Box Pleating question: Balancing deep pleat size with inner pleat gap size

[usonian]

I have exactly 2 yards of double-width Munro Hunting tartan that I'm finally getting around into turning into a kilt. I am a little bit over the hip width where it's recommended to go with 2 1/2 yards, but 2 yards was all that was available and this being a special piece of fabric (Harris Tweed) I decided to buy it anyway. Needless to say, I am going to be using pretty much every inch of this fabric and even so I'll be skimping on the apron edge facings. When I realized how little maneuvering room I had, I switched gears and came at the pleats from a purely mathematical standpoint, figuring that pleating to nothing gave me my best shot to find a workable size and number of pleats.

By happy coincidence, though, I determined that 8 pleats, 3 1/16" wide, with a distance of 8" (give or take 1/8" here and there due to the ABAC sett), will result in the kilt being pleated to the sett and a gap of a little over 1/2" between pleats on the inside, which seems reasonable. The even number of pleats means the sett won't be centered in the back, but I can live with that.

However, that option does force me to skimp on both deep pleats. I'll still be within the minimums recommended in Barb and Matt's supplement to The Art of Kiltmaking, but I'm wondering if I should keep crunching numbers to see if I can gain free up a few extra inches for the deep pleats... as far as I can tell, the tradeoff --regardless of the number and width of pleats-- would be a wider gap between the pleats on the inside. Is there a rule of thumb for the maximum gap one should consider between the pleats inside? Either a hard figure, or proportional to the pleat width?

Thanks as always for any tips & insight - I've said it elsewhere online when I see people looking for information about kiltmaking, but it doesn't get said here often enough: the helpfulness and generosity of the people on this subforum is really amazing.

-Andy

[Pleater]

How about using a bit of dark green or blue fabric to make the under apron? Chose a shade slightly darker than the fabric you have and anyone glimpsing it will assume it is the tartan seen in shadow.

If you make the apron the recomended inch (I think it is) larger so it covers the under apron completely it should hide the addition and you should then have enough extra fabric to make good sized under apron pleats, which I think are a good thing, as they open to reduce the possiblity of the aprons being pulled apart.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[The Wizard of BC]

To better help you, would you please give us your waist and hip circumferences and the Sett size of your Tartan.

[xman]

I've skimped on the reverse pleats (which you call deep pleats) under the aprons a little and it has come out fine. I'm a smaller fellow though.

A half inch between the pleats on the inside is going to be fine, but I'd say keep crunching numbers to try and get the back centred.

[kiltedwolfman]

Why not make the deep pleats out of another fabric? Use a similar weight tweed that is just as dark or slightly darker and splice it in for both the under apron and the deep pleats thus freeing up more of the original fabric for the visible parts of the kilt? If done with good strong joins you will still get a lifetimes worth of wear out of the kilt as well as being able to have a little more freedom with the layout during construction.

[usonian]

Thanks Steve,

Waist 42", Hips 47.5". Pleat splits: Waist 20.5, Hips 24.5 These measurements are a known quantity, as I used them for my 8 yard kilt which fits nicely. I may reduce the waist measurement a little bit, but not the hips.

A complete sett is 10 3/4 inches, but being Black Watch it has an ABAC pattern, where A is the green block with black overcheck. The distance from A block to A block varies by 1/8" due to the B and C blocks being slightly different sizes, but for all intents and purposes a half sett averages 5 3/8 inches.

Thanks for the solid-color underapron extension idea, Anne & kiltedwolfman - this tartan is so dark that it could work very well indeed assuming I can get my hands on some suitable fabric.

[Steve Ashton]

Usonian,

If your apron width at the hip is 24.5 this leaves leave you 23" across the back of the kilt to fill with pleats.

With a 10.75" Sett and you create perfect box pleats your pleat width would be 3.5833" across.

23/3.58 = 6.42 pleats. Call it 7 pleats.
7 pleats each using a full Sett of 10.75" = 75.25" of fabric needed.

Each apron uses approx 25". 25"x2=50".

Deep pleats could be twice as deep as your boxes and use only 14" of fabric.

So let's add it up
75.25" + 50" + 14" =139.25"
139.25"/36 = 3.86 yards of fabric needed.

Depending on how much fabric you lose centering your desired stripe on the aprons you may have just enough.

If you increase the width of each pleat to 3.83" you have six pleats and use only 3.56 yards The space in the back of the pleats would be less than 1/4".

Decrease the number of pleats to 5 and you save another Sett using only 3.27 yards. Your pleat width is 4.6" and the space behind the pleats increases to 1.5".

If it were me I would use 5 or 6 pleats, this should leave you enough for good deep pleats, apron facings and some for waste to align stripes on the aprons.

[usonian]

Thanks, Steve - I could have worded my figures a bit better - 24.5 inches is the distance across the back that I have to fill with pleats, but you've given me another way to think about the pleat width/distance relationship. Back to the spreadsheet!

[The Wizard of BC]

Another way of thinking about box pleats is:

A perfect box pleat, where the edges meet in the front and in the back, is actually three layers of fabric.
So, if you need 24.5" of pleat coverage then that distance needs 3 X 24.5" or 73.5" inches of fabric.
This of course does not take into account the Tartan pattern. The waste almost all comes from aligning the Tartan the way you want.

In Barb's book she lays out the two aprons first. Taking into account getting the stripe she wants centered on the outer apron.
Then she measures to find out how much fabric she has left to make pleats with.
When you gave your figures I just assumed that you would give your figures in much the same way.



In all of this you did not say how you plan to pleat this kilt.
Pleating to the stripe uses on Sett per pleat and pleating to the Sett uses on Sett + one pleat width per pleat.
The nice thing is that you are using a Black Watch derivative so if you pleat to the Strip you may be able to use the element that shows up twice per Sett. This could save you a lot of fabric.

Another way to save fabric is to use black or another dark color on the back of your apron facings, or for the under-apron and of course the waistband could be solid colored.

I would really not skimp on the depth of the deep pleats. These are what allow the aprons to move and hang properly.
As a rule of thumb I use, as a minimum, deep and reverse pleats twice the depth of all the other pleats. Most of my kilt have deep and reverse pleats 10" deep. There is nothing saying that much of that could not be a solid color fabric.

[usonian]

I haven't committed to how to pleat this kilt, as the primary restraint (unless I decide to use a solid color fabric for the underapron and/or deep pleats) is the limited amount of material I have to work with. I'm not ruling out the old, old school option of pleating it to nothing... it's a very dark tartan with pretty-well distributed bands of color, and it would not be all that noticeable.

I did some test pin layouts per p21-22 of Barb and Matt's AOKM addendum (starting with the apron and then pinning pleat centers and the deep pleat forward from the center stripe), which is where I realized I was going to need to strike a balance between deep pleat depth and inner pleat gap. Thanks to this thread I may have found a balance that will work, but I won't have a chance to do another test pinning until tonight.

Should I decide to go with a solid-color underapron, can anyone recommend an online source, preferably in North America, for compatible black or very deep blue or green fabric? (Complicating factor in this case is that I'm working with tweed, not worsted; not that it has to match, but it would be nice.)