Making my first kilt

[gwynng]

Started my first kilt about a week ago thanks to the help of Barb's TAoK. This was not something that I could have done without the instructions from the book. For my first go round I am working with a poly-wool blend that is not quite medium weight, but seems to hang fairly well. It is similar to Grey Douglas Modern, on a 6 inch sett. The main selling features for me were 1) it was the best thing available in the area 2) it was inexpensive and 3) it had a decent selvage so I avoided having to hem the damned thing!

Here are a couple of pics when I finished the pleats. I did cheat and use a sewing machine on the bulk of the pleats. It was just too daunting to take on 25 pleats by hand, but now that I have had a chance to do a good bit of hand sewing on the other parts of the kilt, think that I'll definitely try it down the road.

I wanted to have a dark back and since the black band had no center stripe opted to do a pleating to the band. It also was a little more forgiving in the pleating part above the fell, but may prove tricky below the fell. Visually it is a little dull across the back, but when the pleats open it is kind of a nice surprise. I hope I am able to maintain the line downward when I press it. We'll see...



and a view from the inner apron side...

[usonian]

Nice job on the pleats! I would be interested to see a close-up of your machine-stitching; it's invisible in these photos! I had the same concern about keeping everything straight and aligned below the fell for pressing, but as long as you take care when basting them everything will come out fine.

[gwynng]

Thanks. The pleats do have visible stitching. I haven't figured out how to machine stitch from the back side of the kilt. If anyone knows how to do so with accuracy, please share it. My method was to lay the pleat out, pin it between parts that needed to match up and sew from the waist down to the end of the fell. Pinning away from the stripes that needed to match helped me to keep the lines even because I could adjust as I went. Then I pulled all the top threads through the back of the bottom fell and tied them off to the bobbin thread before trimming. That way hopefully no thread pulling to the outside.

I started basting last night and will probably finish it tonight. That first line of basting at the hem proved to be a little hair raising and I ended up taking parts out and redoing several times. Hoping the following rows will be a little faster since the width is established fairly accurately now.

[David Thorpe]

Nice job! I can't get the hang of matching stripes with machine stitching, but you appear to have it mastered.

[Aspiringloser]

It doesn't have to be a centered stripe. You could have pleated to the double white stripes on black and had less of the lawn chair effect and still had a flash inside the pleats. I'm with Usonian on this one, your stitches look invisible in the pictures. I wish I could stitch my pleats with a machine and have them look as good as yours. I bet you can't make just one kilt. Keep up the good work.

[knotty]

Looks very nice. You should feel proud.