working with herringbone tweed

[keepoffgrass]

a while back I won some green herringbone tween on ebay. Its a lightish green color. Its kinda drab really. it looked darker on the ebay pictures, but its still pretty nice. Anyways... Its 4 plus yards by 58 inches, so its enough to make a kilt. A tank even! Which is what the plan is. But now that I have it in my possession I have noticed that the herringbone runs the length not the with So I have a bit of an issue here. I would think the herringbone should run down the kilt right? not across it? if thats the case then the fabric has to be cut into strips and sewed back together. Much like what The F-H.C.A.G. ran across with her corduroy kilt a while back. (beautiful job on that that too by the way if you're reading this ) I guess if it runs across it would save a whole bunch of extra sewing.

What should I do?? I have to either hand sew the whole thing too or buy another sewing machine. I thinking I'm going to knife pleat this one. I suppose however if I box pleat it, i may be a bit less work and fabric. But I must admit I like the feel and the swing of the 8 yard kilts. Any advise from the experts would be great. Thanks guys

[Dreadbelly]

Make an eight yard box pleat. Double pleat the boxes.

[arrogcow]

Or you could just give up and send the material to the second highest bidder.

Adam

[Barb T]

If you're going to make a knife-pleated trad kilt, it's no big problem to piece the fabric at intervals in the same way you would piece a kilt made from a ripped chunk of double-width tartan. Just figure an extra hour of sewing for each additional join. When you're laying the kilt out, just make sure to allow one full "repeat" (no tartan here, so essentially the distance between pleats) plus enough for seams, and make sure that it's cut in the right place to hide the join inside the pleat.

With 58" fabric (roughly 1.5 yards wide), you'll need 5-6 pieces (4-5 joins) to equal a total of 8 yards.

B

[keepoffgrass]

thanks Barb!