Art of Kiltmaking in hand, I've approached a length of Black Watch determined to wrestle it into a knife-pleat-to-stripe. OK, it's two lengths (3 and 2 yards respectively, double-width) which means one extra join, but I have more than enough material for end user Bob, aka Bigdad1.

My current math:

Waist 40, hips 45 (with a minor bay window, considering jeans size 34)

Waist split 21.5 apron, 18.5 pleats

Hips split 22.5 apron, 22.5 pleats

Planning 21 pleats with 7/8 reveal at waist (fudging two of them larger for final 18.5) and 1-1/16th reveal at the hips (fudging two of them larger for final 22.5). Need for "fudge" assumes I am capable of stitiching to the 1/16th!

Fabric is on the lighter side, with 4-inch sett if I'm measuring right (that's a 6-inch gauge for comparison):


Various XMTS threads have made me think I should create deeper pleats to somewhat compensate for lighter fabric.

Here are two roughly pinned samples with just the 7/8 waist reveal (not pinned to the taper, sorry). Both show a pleat depth of about 3 inches created by pleating to every other stripe.

First I thought I would "pleat to the nothing" or, more accurately, to the almost invisible black stripes next to the green:


But I tried also pleating to the black that's within the green, and think that I like it better:


I tried pleating to the central black stripe in the blue, but it is nearly invisible when working up close to the fabric. It shows up pretty clearly in these photos, but I would go [even more] blind trying to work to it! And I don't think it would turn out looking much different from the first option shown.

Comments, criticisms, suggestions, corrections to my math all welcome!