Kathy Lare Kiltmaker Article March 13, 2011

**Riverkilt** · 16th March 11, 01:59 PM

This article about Kathy ran in Sunday's Albuquerque Journal. Seems well done.

Sunday, March 13, 2011
Local kiltmaker relishes artistic process, history of tartans

Queen of Scots
By Rick Nathanson
Journal Staff Writer
Scotland — the country of "Braveheart" William Wallace and poet Robert Burns. It's the land of world-famous Scotch whiskys, where people eat haggis (don't ask) and listen to bagpipe music.
For sport, Highland games athletes toss caber poles and braemar stones. It's where golf and curling were invented.
But the essence of Scotland and arguably its most recognizable icon is the colorful tartan kilt, a traditional male garment full of history and lore.
Nearly 4,700 miles separate New Mexico and Scotland, but Kathy Lare of Albuquerque has traversed that distance.
She's known as Kathy Lare the kiltmaker because she sews about 150 kilts a year, an effort that she describes as an art, "as well as an ages-old tradition. Kilts are stitched by hand, and it's very technical and mathematical."
Lare, 59, says she is one of only three non-Scots — and the only American — to attend and graduate from the Keith School of Kiltmaking in the Scottish Highlands.
Keith, which no longer accepts foreign students, is the only school in the world that trains people in the art, Lare says.
While Albuquerque has a sizable Scottish and Irish community — and not just on St. Patrick's Day — Lare says she often hears "'What is a kiltmaker doing in New Mexico?'" She adds she hears it especially from out-of-state customers who are more familiar with Native American rugs and Southwest Hispanic textiles, but concedes, "I can see why they might think kiltmaking is an unusual trade to find in New Mexico."
Rediscovering roots
Edie Henderson, president of the St. Andrew Scottish Society of New Mexico, traces her own Scottish Highland roots to about 1640.
The tartan for her clan is dark green and navy blue with thin yellow and white stripes. It makes for an attractive kilt, "but I think kilts in general are beautiful garments to own," she says. "On a handsome man, a kilt is especially striking."
No argument there from Craig Chamberlain, of Albuquerque, who began wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes with the Shriner's Pipe Band 22 years ago.
Chamberlain, who says he may have some Scots-Irish blood from his mother's side of the family, wasn't drawn by cultural yearning for a lost past; rather, for the now-retired Army officer, the attraction was triggered by 1930s and 1940s movies about the British Empire that he watched as a boy.
"There were always battles and bagpipers and fierce soldiers running around in kilts, which struck me as being a bit different but interesting, and more common than you might think."
Like Henderson and Chamberlain, about 40 percent of Lare's clients are from New Mexico. Many of these people are actively involved with the Celtic community, participating in Scottish cultural celebrations such as the Rio Grande Valley Celtic Festival & Highland Games, Robert Burns Night and Scottish pipe and drum bands, says Henderson.
"We band together to remember and teach our heritage," she says. Part of the appeal of all things Celtic "is people have lost touch with their roots and they are now rediscovering them."
More than plaid
Most of the world thinks of it as "plaid," but in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, "tartan patterns are specific to a clan, family, district or organization, such as a branch of the military or a regiment within the military," Lare explains.
Each tartan pattern must be recorded with the Scottish Register of Tartans, part of the National Archives of Scotland. More than 3,000 tartans are on the register, according to Lare.
All this fanfare makes tartan more than just a fabric, she says, "it's living history."
Each kilt takes about eight yards of a single piece of tartan fabric, requires nearly 3,000 stitches to assemble, and can take more than two days to complete. Lare takes a person's waist measurements at the navel, then measures at the widest part of the hips, and then the length from the navel to the floor while the person is kneeling.
"These determine the size of the pleats and the number of pleats in the back," she says. "There should be at least 28." The front of a kilt has un-pleated under and over aprons.
Each kilt sells for about $500. Lare also maintains a large inventory of rental kilts and complete outfits.
The tartan fabric is woven from 100 percent worsted wool created on special looms found only in Scotland, she says. Worsted wool contains longer fibers that are combed to lie parallel to each other and twisted dozens of times to increase their strength and durability. From these fibers Scottish mills produce fabric for tartans, the multicolored patterns of stripes of varying widths that intersect at right angles.
People who buy a kilt from Lare get more than an authentic garment, they also get a lesson in history and culture.
"I like the customers and I like educating them about their heritage," she says. "I tell them about their name and which part of Scotland they come from and the tartans of those areas. It's nice to have that sense of identity, something I didn't have as a child."
Searching for heritage
Lare was born in Dexter, N.M., but moved to Albuquerque's South Valley when she was young. Her mother was a teacher and her father a hydrologist with the Army Corps of Engineers — both of them of Scottish-Irish descent.
"Growing up in the Los Padillas area and attending Rio Grande High School, I knew about the Hispanic culture and I had a lot of friends from Isleta Pueblo, but I didn't know much about my own heritage," she says.
What she did know about was sewing and making clothing, a talent she learned from both her grandmothers.
Lare was 23 years old when she began dancing with the Highland Dancers led by Beulah Macpherson, a Scottish woman who would become a good friend and a mentor, and who imparted Scots Gaelic and Scottish history.
Lare edited "Thistle Epistle," the newsletter for the St. Andrew Scottish Society; taught traditional Gaelic songs; instructed young people about their Scottish and Irish culture; had her own son playing bagpipes at age 8.
"After Beulah returned from a trip to Scotland one year, she brought me some tartan fabric and told me to make a kilt for myself. I think it was about 1987 and it was the first time I had any authentic tartan material to work with. I winged it. I knew how to make plaid skirts and figured it was pretty much the same thing."
When she subsequently showed the kilt to Olive Bell, a leading figure in organizing the Rio Grande Valley Celtic Festival & Highland Games, she was told diplomatically that "there's a way to sew a kilt that is proper and authentic, and I can put you in touch with a kiltmaker from my clan who can show you how to do it," recalls Lare.
That kiltmaker, Mae Livermore, lived in Atlanta but was originally from Scotland and a member of Clan McLeod. "I met with her a number of times and she helped me a lot. After that, I had a pretty good idea how to make kilts."
From hobby to business
Members of the local Scottish and Irish communities began contacting Lare to make kilts for them, then came Celtic song and dance troupes followed by local bagpipe groups. At that point, kiltmaking became a business.
Her clients included the Shriners, who have maintained a pipe and drum band for at least 50 years. In addition to wanting new kilts, the Shriners asked Lare to repair old ones they had had for decades.
"I learned a lot about hand stitching and lining by taking those old kilts apart and looking at them," she says. "They were better constructed than modern kilts and they had more handwork inside and on the canvas lining."
Today, Lare's kilts are lined with Scottish hair canvas, which contains horse hair, and then covered with more comfortable cotton. A completed kilt with eight yards of tartan fabric can weight up to four pounds, she says.
As requests for kilts increased, Lare placed ever larger orders for tartan fabric with the mills in Scotland. The mill owners took notice. During a 1995 trip to Scotland she met with Blair MacNaughton Sr., director of one of the mills and president of the Scottish Tartans Authority, which then ran the Keith School. He invited her to apply to the school.
"It didn't happen right away," she says. "It took two years before I was accepted, and in 1997 I attended and trained under Robert McBain, who had been the kiltmaker for the Gordon Highlanders Scottish Regiment. He was one of only two master kiltmakers in Scotland."
Because she came to the school with more experience than most of the Scottish students, she completed the coursework in a matter of months rather than one year.
Tracing her family
Lare, who has traveled to Scotland many times, says going there "changes you" and makes people who trace their ancestry to the British Isles feel more personal and invested in their history.
Lare, for example, learned that her original family name was MacLaren, and her family's blue and green tartan is widely recognized throughout Scotland.
She also met clan chief Donald MacLaren, a diplomat for Great Britain who most recently was the ambassador to the country of Georgia.
It is these personal connections to history and genealogy that make kiltmaking more than just an exercise in sewing fabric, says Lare.
"When I look at tartans I see the clan and feel the energy and presence of that group of people. It is a spiritual thing to me."

**McFarkus** · 17th March 11, 07:10 AM

Great article. Thanks for posting it.

**kennethrmc** · 17th March 11, 07:57 AM

Ditto!

**bonnie heather** · 17th March 11, 01:20 PM

That's a wonderful article. Thanks for posting it. Kathy sounds like a fantastic kiltmaker and a very interesting person, as well. I wish I could meet her.

**Riverkilt** · 17th March 11, 02:01 PM

She is. email her at her website...takes a while since she sews full time, but she'll answer.

www.kathyskilts.com

**English Bloke** · 18th March 11, 03:11 AM

Judging from your pictures Ron, Kathy does some superb work. I have a Kilt made by Carol Fitzherbert, also a Kieth School graduate and the workmanship is outstanding. You have a wonderful Kilt maker.