Pleating issues w/ new tartan

[Ryan Nielson]

I bought 4 meters of St. David's tartan from martin Mills. Double width and cut it in half. thought that would be enough material.

As I went to knife pleat it to the sett last night with deep 3" pleats I am out of room for my inner apron by about 14 inches so not enough material.

there's probably 3 ways I could go here to make this work.

1) I could pleat less deep 1.5in, but don't want it to look strange.

2) or scrap the knife pleat and go with the box pleat style. I've never owned a box pleat kilt before but it doesn't look too bad to me

3) I could keep it the way I have it but sew it onto another piece of material (from my extra material) to complete the 21 inches for the inner apron. Since the inner apron does not show it would probably not be noticeable, but would it be strong and work well enough.

What would you do?

[piperdbh]

I'm not a kiltmaker, but I think if it were me, I'd sew on the extra piece for the inner apron, especially since you already have it pleated. And then I'd post some pics for everyone to "Oohhh and ahhhh" over.

[Ryan Nielson]

I'm not a kiltmaker, but I think if it were me, I'd sew on the extra piece for the inner apron, especially since you already have it pleated. And then I'd post some pics for everyone to "Oohhh and ahhhh" over.

I was considering this. The stripes and sett would not match up but it would not matter cause it's on the inner apron. But maybe there's a problem with this idea I haven't thought of.

I actually pulled all of my pins out so I'd have to repleat it all anyway.

[Pleater]

You could try making fewer pleats per sett, as you must have got a lot of 3 inch deep pleats with 26 ft of fabric - or at least I'd have thought so.

I've made kilts with pieced together fabric for the under apron - and it did work.

I think I still have a couple, but if you are lucky with how the pattern falls and sew the seams carefully it really isn't all that obvious - I have a repair to make on one kilt which snagged and broke a seam that I had forgotten was there, and I had ironed and pressed it without noticing.

Oh - I just realised - that is brithwe Dewi Sant - which way to the strong colour bands go on the kilt, down or across?

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Alan H]

My Gray stewart has an extra piece added to make the under-apron full-width...no problems.

That said, how many pleats do you have in this thing? I assume three inch deep pleats means that the sett size is about 6 3/4 t0 7 1/4 inches.

[Ryan Nielson]

Although I've made a few kilts now I don't really know what a set means exactly but

The taran is simple. red, green, red, green

Each color (stripe) of that is about 1.5"

So i'm something like

6" tucked under----1.5" showing red stripe----6" tucked under----1.5" showing green stripe

That's how I had it when I ran out of material.

If I tuck 3" it doesn't appear deep like my other kilts. I thought that might make it look kind of off unless I went deeper.

[Ryan Nielson]

I had to edit the above becasue I think I'm tucking more than 3in more like 5-6inches probably when I thought about it.

[ForresterModern]

Marton Mills 11oz PV in St David's appears (at least from Scotweb's listing) to have alternating similar width vertical stripes of a green and red, with white and red overchecks.

Okay, first I am not a kiltmaker so I may seem ignorant of some facts normally taken for granted by experienced kiltmakers. So please pardon my ignorance.

I am a bit confused as you state that you took 4 meters of DW fabric and split it before pleating, so I must assume you are only using one of the two 4 m SW pieces that result, and saving the other for other purposes. Why not piece it together and make a full 8yd kilt? With the lighter weight of the material the extra yardage would give you a kilt with a bit more bulk and body, and definitely better swish value with more and deeper pleats across the back. It would even allow you to double or triple fringe the front apron to add a bit of weight to that part as well. And I have to believe it would give you far better pleating options across the back. The fabric is relatively inexpensive (only about $20US per DW meter per Scotweb, plus s/h) and you could always get more for whatever other project you had the second piece set aside for. Just one man's opinion.

j

[The Wizard of BC]

The Sett of a Tartan is the total distance from one repeat of the Tartan pattern to the next repeat. A repeat can be any line. In your Tartan it could be the distance from one white stripe to the next white stripe.

The normal way for a Kiltmaker to determine how many pleats a Kilt will have is to lay out both the aprons first. Then figure out how much fabric is left over. If you are planning to pleat to the white stripe for example, you would lay out the aprons and the deep pleats. Then count how many white stripes are left over for the pleats.

Lets say, for example that you have your aprons layed out and you have 28 white stripes left over in the middle for the back pleated section.
Let's also say, for example that your splits would give you a pleated section of 28". This would mean that you would end up with 28 - 1" Pleats.

But now let's say that you are a very large guy and your hips will require not 28" of pleated area but 42".
You still have 28 repeats of the Sett to work with and you could still have 28 pleats but now each one would be 1.5" wide. The width, or reveal of each pleat would be larger and the depth of each pleat would be smaller but it would use exactly the same amount of fabric.

In general most Kiltmakers use, as a rough estimate, a Hip measurement of 44"-45" as the cutoff of whether to order 4 yards of fabric or 4.5 yards of fabric. This estimate is dependent on some other factors such as the size of the Sett. Larger Sett sizes require more fabric.

On another note the St. David's Tartan is woven by the Wales Tartan Center and not Marton Mills. It is also not a true Tartan by the strict definition of the term. To be a Tartan the pattern should be symetrical up and down, and the same side to side. The resulting pattern should be squares. The Welsh Tartans do not follow this strict rule however. So sometimes you can end up with very interesting looks when pleated.

[Alan H]

How far is it from one white stripe to the next white stripe?