Hello From Philadelphia, and Great Kilt help

[AlchemiCailleach]

Hi all.

I am of Scottish ancestry and a paternally first-gen American. I have become interested in Tartans and Kilts a great deal in the last year or so. My first was the Black Stewart comfy kilt from Sport Kilt, but now I have a PV Ancient MacKay 5 yd great kilt.

My last name is Collins, which falls under the Angus District, which led me to the following forum page here. This was perhaps the most influential things on me when I began searching for Tartan patterns. I thought long and hard about many factors, and different materials and weights and features (just about a year of 'research' to distract from class work and other stuff). For that, I thank the members of this forum for your aid. I ultimately landed on the MacKay tartan because of color scheme and sette size, while the darker Angus tartan was not available at a similar price anywhere I could find.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...tartans-88676/

I am looking for help with my great kilt, if anyone can provide some help. Here are the details:

I have a waist between 36-39 inches, and wider hips than waist. My pleating instructions say to make the aprons half the waist size, and the width of the pleated part half the waist size. So, if we estimate that to be 18 inches per half of the apron, then the 5 yd kilt has 4 yds to be distributed in the pleated section, which stretches across another 18 inches. Does anyone know a good way to calculate the pleat depth, width/separation, number, etc? The sette is about 6 in square, and when I made the pleats 6 in deep I still had too much in each part, and so I need the pleats to either be deeper or closer together. I would prefer though that the pleats be deep enough not to come undone easily.

Thank you very much all!