Our local Military unit here in Victoria is The Canadian Scottish. They brought me two of their Kilts to see if there was anything I could do to repair them.
These two kilts are approx. 20 to 30 years old and have seen their share of use and abuse so I thought it would be sort of cool to do a pictorial of the repairs as I do them.
I'm not trying to return these to like new condition and I'm not going to work non-stop on them so this thread may take a few days or weeks to finish.

Here is the first Kilt in sort of the condition that I received it. I say sort of because this kilt was so filthy that it almost stood up on it's own. So the first thing I did was wash it.
It took three baths in my tub with Woolite for the water to not come out black.

Here is the kilt with the first couple of lines of basting just to sort of stabilize everything. There are no creases left in any of the pleats.



This next photo shows the Fell area where the previous repairs and worn stitching came out as soon as the dirt was no longer holding everything together.



As I was basting the pleats I noticed some strange features of these kilts.

First is that there is no reverse pleat. The last pleat on the right side ends and the apron begins as it comes out from under the last pleat. So there is no under apron left side.

The outer apron is strange too. It is not symmetrical. As you can see in this photo the crease on the left side is totally different from the right side.



The next step was to remove the liner and interfacing. It is very worn and broken down.

I noticed as I removed the liner that there is no stabilizer holding the stresses of the buckles from the pleat stitching. This is probably why the Fell stitches have failed repeatedly.



Here is a close up of the interfacing.



Because I am going to need to reshape the outer apron I need to remove the top band. And what do you think I find but the original top band underneath.
I had noticed that the Fell felt awfully thick and puffy to me. Here is part of the problem.



This is the end of the first days work on this Kilt. I'll continue this thread as the work progresses.

Some advice to those who find a used military kilt listed as 'some wear and normal use". Find a good kiltmaker and be prepared to pay dearly in labor charges.