pleated to the "dreaded lawn chair effect"

[Barb T]

This is the original picture Terry sent to me as we were talking about how he wanted his next kilt to be pleated.

Whether this would work would depend on the size of the sett. The dark green block isn't particularly wide, and that means the pleats have to be small. I can't see all the pleats in the kilt in Steve's pic, but I can count at least 30 pleats in what I can see. Even if the sett size is average, it would take a _huge_ amount of tartan (if the sett size were 8", 32 pleats would require over 7 yards just in the pleats!). So, you'd be OK if the sett size was smaller, but you'd have to measure to be sure.

Furthermore, my feeling is that, at some point, the pleats can get so small that the kilt stops looking like a kilt. Personally, I think pleats smaller than about 3/4" at the hips across a guy's backside starts to look like something other than a kilt. Yes, I've seen historic kilts with tiny pleats, but, in the current world of kiltmaking, I think it looks odd.

And, as an aside, something is odd about this kilt, because it has "the wave" going on at the bottom. Either the hip measurement is too big across the back, or the pleats aren't pressed straight parallel to a tartan line from the bottom of the fell to the bottom of the kilt (i.e., the pleats are pressed with a flare). Dunno which. Could be both. The fact that the kilt dips in between the butt cheeks suggests it's at least partly the former..