material for a first homemade kilt

[uncle remus]

I am going to try to sew my first kilt in the next few months. I saw the recomendation for the wool on e-bay in another post. I have found an ad for Royal Stewart tartan in pv on ebay here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/TARTAN-ROYAL...item27cfb57bab . The price is about a 1/3 of the wool. My question is how much harder is the pv to work with than wool and is this a good deal. I noticed it doesn't specify the weight. Is there a way to tell it's equivalent weight in wool?

Moderators if this is in the wrong location please repost to correct place

[sydnie7]

Are you machine sewing something like an XKilt or hand sewing from a book such as the Art of Kiltmaking?

Machine sewing, you'll do fine with PV but much harder to match up tartan lines. Start with solid fabric, check fabric recommendations in the XKilt manual.

Hand sewing, spring for wool. You have to shape the fabric and wool lets you do that vs. PV which is less malleable.

Fabric weight is measured in ounces and all fabrics are measured the same way (generally speaking). There are many posts here on how to weigh/measure fabric to determine if you have 18 oz, 13 oz, etc. Doesn't matter whether you are weighing wool, PV, velvet, burlap.

Give us a few more details about what you hope to accomplish/end product and you'll get lots of recommendations!

[uncle remus]

i was planning on hand sewong it. I have a machine and do sew that way but I want to do one by hand. I have a copy of taok, and have read it through several times. I am currently learning the stitches I will need to hand sew a kilt. I want something for everyday wear more than anything else.

[jhockin]

Check out this website for the discount wool tartan, double wide, 12oz.

http://wooltartan.com/discount-tartans/

[The Wizard of BC]

If you will look on pages 55 and 56 of TAoK you will see that to properly shape the Aprons you need to draw a large 'S' curve line.

Creating this curve in fabrics other than wool is difficult in most synthetic fabrics and impossible in Poly/Cottons. Wool on the other hand is incredibly malleable with the heat of steam.

This curve also creates the need to shape the fabric directly behind the apron edges. We also force shape into the Fell of the kilt.

Using any fabric other than wool for this shaping, will, I'm afraid, make your first kilt less enjoyable.

There is one other characteristic of P/V that you need to know about. If you have your iron on a setting other than very low the fabric creases will become virtually permanent. Once they are in there is no going back and correcting a mistake or changing your mind. Wool may be creased and un-creased almost forever.

So my advice is, if you want the best fabric, by far, for a first kilt, go with the best quality kilt wool you can afford.

As you are buying only four yards of double-width fabric the actual price difference between a cheap fabric and kilt wool is very little. In the case of my retail prices the difference between my cheapest and my most expensive fabrics is only $120.00 per kilt.

[Barb T]

Ditto to what the Wiz says. Wool is much easier to sew on, and heavy weight tartan is the easiest to work with. My advice is always to buy the best tartan you can, and to get heavy weight if possible.

Although it will be your first kilt, you shouldn't think of it as a "practice" kilt. It will take you probably 40 hours to make it, and you want something at the end that you know is more than a practice kilt!

[chasem]

Check out this website for the discount wool tartan, double wide, 12oz.

http://wooltartan.com/discount-tartans/

A word of caution: I've ordered from this link twice. The first time the wool was okay - not great.

The second time it was unusable for a kilt. There were only 4 yards left of what I ordered, so I got it all. I measured, cut, and ripped the first side, then checked it against the other side only to find that the two sides would not match up. The part of the tartan that was repeated in the 26.5" I had already ripped took nearly 28" to repeat on the other side... which meant there was no way to piece these two pieces together to form a kilt-length of any sort, as the material is too light to be suitable as a 4-yard kilt.

I've since found another use for the two 4-yard pieces (as part of a tartan quilt which I'll post about here eventually...) but I was certainly not happy about the wool either time, particularly that second order.