Basting pleats for pressing

[Barb T]

Hi folks

Because this has come up a bunch of times, I thought it might be useful to make a post that explains how to baste a kilt for pressing. It truly doesn't take very long to do, and it makes a huge difference in the kind of quality job you can do. And, if you take it to a dry cleaner to have it pressed, you should absolutely take the time to baste the pleats, or the cleaner is likely to splay the pleats before pressing and ruin them.

The crucial thing is to make sure that the pleats are basted absolutely the same width from the bottom of the fell to the bottom of the kilt, as in the drawing below:



Thread a needle with white basting thread. Lay the kilt out in your lap with the top edge to the left and the pleats across your lap. Start at the bottom of the kilt at the apron edge. Pick up the apron edge plus the first pleat. Lap the apron edge onto the first pleat at the right point, and take a couple of big stitches (1/2-3/4") through all four thicknesses:



Then pick up the next pleat, lap the previous pleat onto it at the right place, carry the thread from the first stitches, and take two or three stitches through four thicknesses. Because you work your way across the kilt picking up only one pleat at a time, you aren't trying to sew a whole pile of unwieldy cloth all at once.



Work your way across the bottom of the kilt. Make another row just below the bottom of the fell, and a couple more in between. The diagrams shows three stitches in each pleat, but I've found that two holds just fine and takes less time to do:



When it comes time to take out the basting stitches, don't use anything sharp that could snag or cut the kilt. Don't use scissors, a knife, or a seam ripper. Get something blunt like a big knitting needle or a crochet hook. I use a pair of blunt tip tweezers. Rather than cutting the threads and pulling out all the little bits, I just slip the blade of the tweezers under each thread and pull it back through the cloth.

Hope this helps!

[BEEDEE]

Barb - thank you. I took a kilt recently to our local cleaners that have previous experience with kilts and still had two pleats pressed wrong. So next time they will get a kilt with proper basting.

Brian

[pdcorlis]

Great post Barb - basting pleats doesn't take long and it really produces a wonderful worry free outcome.

[Chef]

Great info, thanks Barb. I think even I can handle that.

[gilmore]

Barb,

Thanks for posting this.

I am amazed again at your generosity of spirit, taking the time out of your busy life to come up with these drawings and photographs to help out others, most of us strangers whom you will likely never meet.

[Barb T]

...to come up with these drawings....

Thanks for the kind words! But I don't want it to sound like I slaved over these. I just went to my hard drive and made jpegs out of the drawings I did for my book on kiltmaking, and I just took a kilt that I finished last night, slapped it on the scanner, and scanned it. No big effort, believe me!

[ChattanCat]

Now where have I seen those instruction before?...

[SFCRick]

Thank you very much

[Rex_Tremende]

Barb -

In the third figure, I think I count five layers of fabric formed by the folds where the longitudinal stitches are depicted. The basting stitch only goes through the top four layers and skips the bottom?

Also, if we take the time to baste the kilt, can it also be dry cleaned in this state if we are afraid of the bathtub method?

Thanks,
Rex.

[Barb T]

Barb -

In the third figure, I think I count five layers of fabric formed by the folds where the longitudinal stitches are depicted. The basting stitch only goes through the top four layers and skips the bottom?

Also, if we take the time to baste the kilt, can it also be dry cleaned in this state if we are afraid of the bathtub method?

Thanks,
Rex.

Wally has it right. You see 5 layers in the drawing, but, when you're actually doing the basting, you've only stitched through 4 layers (2 pleats). That fifth layer was out of the way when you stitched the previous four layers.

I've thought often of your suggestion of having a kilt dry cleaned as basted. In principle, it would work. I think I'd take a basted kilt to the cleaner and ask how much stress would be placed on the basting stitches during the dry cleaning process, and they could tell you whether you'd wind up with a lot of little stretched holes in your kilt.