6 yard box pleated kilt in the making

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Currently I am in the middle of making a six yard box pleated kilt in the MacLaine of Lochbuie Hunting tartan (ancient colors, 16 oz heavy weight cloth from Lochcarron). In light of the discussion going on in this thread about the differences between an historical box pleated kilt (made from four yards of cloth) and a modern day regimental box pleated kilt (made from closer to eight yards of cloth), I thought it might be enlightening to show this "in between" style of kilt to illustrate the continuity between these two pleating styles. Indeed, what we have are not truly two different pleating styles, but rather one pleating style made with varying amounts of cloth in the kilt.

As of now, I have sewn in all the pleats in this kilt. The tartan has a sett repeat of just over 5" and for the purposes of this kilt I have decided to pleat to every other stripe (effectively making the sett repeat 10.25"). There are 13 pleats, which are 1.75" wide at the hips and 1.5" wide at the waist (tapering back out to about 1.75" wide at the top). Here is the kilt just after I have sewn the pleats in, but before doing anything else.


Right now, you might call these pleats "in the raw." They are neither box pleats or knife pleats, but simple pleats which can become either depending on what I do with them at this point. All that has been done is that the cloth has been folded over onto itself and sewn in place to form a basic pleat. When looking on from the top down, you can see large loops formed by this folded cloth.


For the next several photos, what you will be looking at is the kilt laying face down on my work table, so that the top of the kilt is pointed toward the viewer. You are looking at the ripped edge of the fabric that will later be hidden by the waistband. The inside of the pleats are face-up.

Depending on how I lay the pleats I can make knife pleats going in one direction...


...or the other.


If I want to make a box pleated kilt, instead of laying the "loop" of cloth down flat, I would open it up so that part of it lies on either side of the line of stitching which forms the pleat. If this were an historic box pleated kilt, made from four yards of cloth, I would open up the loop so that the cloth is evenly distributed on either side, like so.


However, this kilt is made with six yards of cloth, not four. A four yard kilt would have wider pleats, and less cloth inside the pleat. In a four yard kilt, when I open up the "loop" of the pleat like this, the edge of either side will come about to the mid-point of the face of the pleat next to it (at the hip line, anyway -- up at the top of the waist there would be more overlap, assuming the waist is more narrow than the hips). As it is with this kilt, being made from six yards, there is a lot more material in each pleat, and the face of the pleat is more narrow. That means that not only does the material extend past the mid-point of the face of the pleat on either side, but actually overlaps a bit onto the next pleat over, as you can see in the close-up below.


So, when making a box pleated kilt from more than four yards of cloth, I don't center the "loop" when I open it up. Instead, I lay it out so that the edge on one side comes no farther than the face of the pleat, while the remainder of the cloth in the other direction overlaps the next couple of pleats significantly. As long as the deep part of the pleat runs in the same direction for each pleat, the overlap is no problem. The next two photos show this "asymmetrical" way of laying out the pleat.



So what if this were a modern-day regimental kilt made from a nominal eight yards of cloth, with pleats that were even more narrow? Well, you'd do the same thing, only the difference between one side of the pleat and the other would be even more extreme. The "loop" may only lay a quarter inch or so across its neighbor in one direction, as I have "mocked up" here (if you can imagine the edge of the pleat about where the yellow line is in this tartan, you'd get an idea of the size of the pleat in an eight yard kilt).


My process in doing this is to start at one end of the kilt and pin the pleats in place as I want them. Once they are all pinned in place, I can sew them down with a line of stitching on the top of the kilt (under where the waist band would go), as well as stabilizing stitches just above the hip-line (the "fell"). Here is a shot showing one of the pleats pinned in and ready to sew.


Now this does not begin to go into the other details of kilt making that would come into play at this point, such as cutting out the excess cloth in the inside of the pleats for higher yardage kilts, or the use of hair canvas or stabilizers. It's just meant to give you an idea of how these pleats are formed.

We'll conclude in the next post...

[M. A. C. Newsome]

So if we flip the kilt over at this point so that we are once more looking at the outside of the kilt, and imagine I have sewn and stabilized all of these pleats, this is what you would see.

One one side of the box pleat, the pleat depth would be rather narrow, as you can see by how far I can insert my hand, above. On the other side, however, the pleat depth is very much deeper, as illustrated in the below photograph.


(The little white lines you are seeing at the bottom of each pleat are simply chalk lines which I put in to mark the bottom of the pleat.)

The only difference between this kilt and a four yard box pleated kilt is that the pleats are a bit more narrow. The only difference between this kilt and an eight yard box pleated kilt (aka regimental box pleated kilt) is that the pleats are a bit more wide.

I truly do hope that these series of photos helps to answer peoples' questions about the difference between a historical box pleated kilt and the modern-day counterpart, the regimental box pleated kilt. I will be finishing up this kilt in the coming days and will post more photos when the whole thing is complete.

Thanks!

[Grizzly]

Matt that's fantastic . So educational and informative with great pictures. Should be a sticky.

[Downunder Kilt]

Fantastic Matt, thanks for taking the time to do this. It's certainly easier to understand when you see something rather than try to visulise it from the written word. Great thread

[creagdhubh]

Matt that's fantastic . So educational and informative with great pictures. Should be a sticky.

***

Always a joy seeing your kilt-making skills and knowledge in action, Matt!

Thanks for sharing,

[Spartan Tartan]

What a great pictoral description of how you pleat. Amaxing colours and a beautiful kilt in the making.

[Standard]

Matt, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and these several pictures said volumes. Between the descriptions you gave, and the accompanying, uncluttered photos you spelled out very simply the hows and whys of the different types of box pleated kilts. THANKS!