Hi all,

I've successfully ordered Barbara Tewksbury's book, and if its half as good as all of you say it is, it's going to be a breeze to make my first trad kilt, right?

In order to shorten the wait, having run out of patience years ago, I went to the fabric store and came home with a lovely polyester/viscous twill. I'd be hard pressed to call it a tartan, even a fantasy tartan, but it is certainly tartan inspired, and designed as a tartan is designed.

Here it is in all its glory (sorry about the poor quality iPhone camera):


The only problem I have with this gorgeous looking baby is that the "sett" is actually almost a metre across... Here is half the sett:



... and the other half ...


So I scratched my head, and my ... hip ... washed my hands, and tried a very quick test pleat, no pins or anything, just laid it out roughly to get an idea:



So, here's my question:

Should I go ahead and kilt this fabric up, pleated to the cheat as above? Any other ideas about how to pleat this?

And if I do it as shown above, do I use the broad red or broad white stripe as the hem (no kilting selvedge, must be hemmed)? My first thought was to hem the red stripe folded in half (slightly over 2 inch hem).

I'll keep posting here on my progress. I've also ordered Folkwear's Prince Charlie pattern, and will use a "scrap" of suiting weight black poly/wool gabardine I have lying around for the coatee and vest. Still contemplating whether to get real or imitation silk satin for the lapels...