New in the post: Weathered Buchanan

[Barb T]

Hi Shedlock,

Just be very careful when you lay your kilts out on a big flat surface like the floor and then press them. In your picture, the pleats in each of the kilts are splayed in a fan - if you press them that way, they will make the dreaded "wave" when you put the kilt on. When you press a kilt, you should be absolutely sure that the pleats are truly all parallel to one another when you press and that each pleat reveal is exactly the same width from the bottom of the fell to the bottom of the kilt. if you lay the kilt flat with the pleats splayed, you'll press in a reveal that is tapered (wider at the bottom of the kilt and narrower at the bottom of the fell). You don't want that. If you want to press your kilts on a big flat surface, you have to really work at laying them out so that the pleats are parallel and not splayed - you'll get kind of a hump at the hips. It's actually easier to hang the fell end of the kilt off the end of an ironing board and then work all the pleats in a particular section into parallelism on the deck of the ironing board and press that section. Then you won't get a splay, and you won't have to deal with the hump at the hips when you pull all the pleats parallel.