SWK Thrifty kilt and accessories JUST IN!

[Burly Brute]

So I just got my order from SWK...

And I am really diggin the kilt. The sporran strap/chain (came with sporran) and strap (ordered) did not fit, so I think ill cut them up, peice them together and make them work. The flashes look pretty decent, as does the sporran. Lovin' the brass kilt pin.

What does this all mean to you without pics! So here they are! Including video!!!

http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c7...t=M4H00028.mp4
This video seems like I am moving really fast, but it just uploaded weird. I am not that much of a spaz!

Kinda saddened by the condition of the box...stupid priority mail!!!


All the order laid out...


Thumbs up approval!


I just threw it on the second I opened it, I tried the best I could with the 10 seconds I allotted myself. Haha.


I am diggin' the pleats, I am gonna leave the stitching in until I decide to sew the inside a bit or not, your thoughts?


All in all I am very impressed with how quick and what quality one can get for 30 bucks. Thanks rabble for the suggestion and thanks Jerry!!!

Zach



P.S. I also got some cool company buisness cards! yahoo!

[Mickey]

Looking good dude! It's all downhill from here. Get a second job. You'll need it to feed the addiction!

And yes, I'd drop some stitches in now, right now... otherwise, you'll just have to re-baste to get some good needlewok. It's easy to do, but it's still work, and who likes that?

You're gonna love it!

[Burly Brute]

Looking good dude! It's all downhill from here. Get a second job. You'll need it to feed the addiction!

And yes, I'd drop some stitches in now, right now... otherwise, you'll just have to re-baste to get some good needlewok. It's easy to do, but it's still work, and who likes that?

You're gonna love it!

Haha tell me about it. This is actually my second kilt, my other one is a tank I bought cheap because it was from a kilt rental show that was closing down.

I just need to figure out how much to sew vertically, inside the pleats? I'm not good, but I bought black thread for that reason!

[sevenoaks]

Glad you like it..Take out the shipping stitching and it will hang a bit better. Looks great for that price..wear it with pride!

[MacMillans son]

Congrats on your new purchase Zach!

I'm confused about your question, what sewing of the inside are you referring to?

[Burly Brute]

Congrats on your new purchase Zach!

I'm confused about your question, what sewing of the inside are you referring to?

Sewing the pleats inside to keep them somewhat together? haha. Idk, that's why I am asking!

[Whidbey78]

Congrats on the new acquisition. Once the fell is stitched you pretty much have a Standard model via sweat equity. I've done it myself...bought a used Thrifty for about 15 bucks.

Whether you stitch the fell inside the pleat or on the outside is entirely your call. I did that on my SWK a long time ago. The acrylic material has some give and some "squishiness" to it, which can be used to your advantage.

If you machine stitch it, you will have to do it on the outside unless you want to take it apart, and that's a LOT of work. If you machine sew it, use a teflon coated foot and just enough presser-foot pressure to make it feed through the machine. Too much pressure and it will skew the pattern where the foot drags. Those nice straight lines will turn into zig-zags. Too much thread tension and it will bunch up, but not much.

If you hand sew it you could put the stitches inside the pleat where they will be hidden, just keep them right on the crease at the edge of the pleat. Use a slight backstitch and it will stay lined up. Don't pull it too tight though. If you stitch it on the outside(much easier, especially up by the waistband) kepp your stitches even and it will look good.

Either way you go, if the stitches are short they will nearly vanish into the loose weave. I machine stitched the fell on my SWK Wallace with black thread and it's almost invisible, even in the bright red areas. I had to fight to keep the lines straight, which is why I advise a teflon foot(they're cheap too, but the nearest sewing shop is an hour's drive so I just forged ahead) and light pressure. I wasn't too worried about it being perfect since it was a knock-around kilt for hiking, stump-shooting, 3-D shoots, yard work, fishing, etc. I even bought it used!

A few would say to use seam tape, but I wouldn't for several reasons. First, you don't really want that much heat on an acrylic kilt and seam tape has to get pretty darn warm to bond the fabric. Second, that stuff doesn't stick as well to smoother synthetics as natural fibers. Third, seam tape doesn't hold up well to machine washing, so it probably won't last. If you iron this thing, keep the heat really low(try the lowest setting first and increase the heat a bit at a time until it finally works out the wrinkles), press it without moving the iron around, and don't move it until it cools a bit. You'd be amazed how much you can stretch and skew that stuff when it's warmed up.

If you can find low-temp seam tape, it works really well for "anchoring" long stretches of material(especially if it has a lot of give) for machine sewing. It's way easier than pins, and after a washing everything will loosen up and you'll never know it was there. It will all be in hidden areas too, so it won't foul up the look. Just make sure everything is right where you want it, and put it under the pleat and inside the pleat so the stuff doesn't skew on you.

Get one of those $5 "fuzz busters" from Wally World. Acrylic pills and fuzzes up like crazy. I went over mine a while back and had enough to fill two coffee cups...but it had been a long time since I had done it.

Dang...I'm going and getting all long-winded again. Time for Allen to shut up.

However you decide to sew it, take your time and it will come out well.

Have fun BB.

[Burly Brute]

I'm so confused, would it at all be possible to provide pictures of where/what to sew?

Congrats on the new acquisition. Once the fell is stitched you pretty much have a Standard model via sweat equity. I've done it myself...bought a used Thrifty for about 15 bucks.

Whether you stitch the fell inside the pleat or on the outside is entirely your call. I did that on my SWK a long time ago. The acrylic material has some give and some "squishiness" to it, which can be used to your advantage.

If you machine stitch it, you will have to do it on the outside unless you want to take it apart, and that's a LOT of work. If you machine sew it, use a teflon coated foot and just enough presser-foot pressure to make it feed through the machine. Too much pressure and it will skew the pattern where the foot drags. Those nice straight lines will turn into zig-zags. Too much thread tension and it will bunch up, but not much.

If you hand sew it you could put the stitches inside the pleat where they will be hidden, just keep them right on the crease at the edge of the pleat. Use a slight backstitch and it will stay lined up. Don't pull it too tight though. If you stitch it on the outside(much easier, especially up by the waistband) kepp your stitches even and it will look good.

Either way you go, if the stitches are short they will nearly vanish into the loose weave. I machine stitched the fell on my SWK Wallace with black thread and it's almost invisible, even in the bright red areas. I had to fight to keep the lines straight, which is why I advise a teflon foot(they're cheap too, but the nearest sewing shop is an hour's drive so I just forged ahead) and light pressure. I wasn't too worried about it being perfect since it was a knock-around kilt for hiking, stump-shooting, 3-D shoots, yard work, fishing, etc. I even bought it used!

A few would say to use seam tape, but I wouldn't for several reasons. First, you don't really want that much heat on an acrylic kilt and seam tape has to get pretty darn warm to bond the fabric. Second, that stuff doesn't stick as well to smoother synthetics as natural fibers. Third, seam tape doesn't hold up well to machine washing, so it probably won't last. If you iron this thing, keep the heat really low(try the lowest setting first and increase the heat a bit at a time until it finally works out the wrinkles), press it without moving the iron around, and don't move it until it cools a bit. You'd be amazed how much you can stretch and skew that stuff when it's warmed up.

If you can find low-temp seam tape, it works really well for "anchoring" long stretches of material(especially if it has a lot of give) for machine sewing. It's way easier than pins, and after a washing everything will loosen up and you'll never know it was there. It will all be in hidden areas too, so it won't foul up the look. Just make sure everything is right where you want it, and put it under the pleat and inside the pleat so the stuff doesn't skew on you.

Get one of those $5 "fuzz busters" from Wally World. Acrylic pills and fuzzes up like crazy. I went over mine a while back and had enough to fill two coffee cups...but it had been a long time since I had done it.

Dang...I'm going and getting all long-winded again. Time for Allen to shut up.

However you decide to sew it, take your time and it will come out well.

Have fun BB.

[Oddern]

Congrats on your new kilt. I would recomend sewing the pleats by hand. It's not that difficult. Divide the length of the pleats in 3. The upper 1/3 of the pleats are to be sewn down. Sew from the outside, small stiches along the edge of the pleats and through all layers of fabric. Good idea to leave the bastings in until you ahve sewn the pleats.
Sorry I have no pics to illustrate. Let's see if Allen comes back with some pics.
Skål!

[Whidbey78]

That took a lot longer than I expected. Photobucket was slooooooooooow.

I wish I could show this in an "exploded" view, but that would require tearing down one of my kilts. Ain't happenin'.

Okay, first, here's the Wallace I was talking about. If you look at the yellow stripes below the buckle you can see the skewing I referred to. Like I said, this is a threadbare knock-around kilt that actually doesn't fit anymore. It shrunk...I don't care what my wife says!


You can sew it down from the outside like in this pic. It's hard to see but on the right edge of each pleat you can see a line of stitches about 1/8 inch from the edge. This is the easy way to do it.


Make sure the stitches end at the same point on each pleat. With tartan it's easy--just use the pattern for reference.


You'll get a nicer finished product--more like a tank--if you do the stitches inside the pleat. The stitches will be hidden from view because they are underneath the outermost layer of fabric in the pleat you are sewing. Basically, from the inside side of the kilt, open up the pleat like this, and stitch it through the next pleat right where it's creased(between my thumb and finger in the pic). An easier way to picture it is that the stitch is just like the ones pictured above, except that they don't run through the outermost layer of fabric. If you picture a cross-section of the pleats, imagine it stitched like above...now just move the top of the stitches one layer down. I hope that helps a little.



Here is basically the same thing on my USAK Oakleigh. It dawned on me right before I was going to post this that red doesn't photograph well with a flash, so I stripped off the one I was wearing and snapped a couple of pics.

You can see the stitching along the right-hand edge of the pleat.


This is like the above pic--if you want to hide the stitches they should pass through the next pleat right where it's creased.


This one illustrates another thing to keep in mind. Whether you stitch the pleat down from the inside or have the stitches visible, only stitch through the next pleat. If the second pleat down is deep enough to reach where you're stitching move it out of the way. Stitching through more than the next pleat can create issues with how they all hang...not always. Sometimes you CAN do this and you won't have to do any steeking, but it depends on how it fits you. That's more than we need to get into here.


I would advise stitching the fell on the outside. It's much easier, and the finished product is still good. There are many ways to mess up when stitching the inside of the pleat if you haven't done it before. Hand stitching it is easy, just take your time so the stitches are even. You already have a tank, so a SWK certainly can't compete for top spot in your wardrobe anyhow.

If you machine stitch it, keep the pressure light, tension light, use a teflon foot(or better yet a walking foot) and if you can get the low-temp seam tape use it to prevent skewing like I have on the Wallace. Basically, wherever you run a stitch, have a layer of tape between every layer of fabric so they all stay where you want them. It helps a lot. I recently finished a kilt for my son and had to do that. The lines got badly distorted as the foot dragged the top layer of fabric around, so I ripped the stitches out and used the tape and they stayed dead perfect. I would have a pic, but I can't get to it without waking the little guy up.

Hopefully that cleared it up a little. Look through the tutorials and such on the forum. Somewhere on here someone probably has a better set of pics.

One last thing...when figuring out how far to sew the fell the rule of thumb is to go 1/3 of the way down from the waist. Most often that works fine, but I'm one of those odd-build guys and that puts it a bit low. One way to make sure it's in the right spot is to put it on, stand in front of a mirror, llooking at your backside. Figure out where the widest point (biggest circumference) is, and put a chalk mark, piece of tape or a pin at that point. Since it's tartan all you need is one mark somewhere. Stitch each pleat down to that point in the pattern. In the pics of the wallace it's at the bottom of the second black stripe--strangely that's where it is on the Oakliegh too. Anyhow, that's the easiest way to do it.

Now, I had better put my kilt back on, or shut the window, before the neighbors see me.

Good luck brother.