New here with some question.

[Lorna]

I would suggest reading Barb's book cover to cover before buying material. I has a lot of good advice and from there you can make a better informed decision.

Oh, and welcome to Xmarks!

[Bearded Man Brew]

I am a bit torn when it comes to the topic of fabric. I started making kilts out of cotton and cotton/poly blends. While you can make them look nice, they are definately not traditional. I also know that I have scrapped my first few because I did not like how they turned out. They also require alot of ironing. You also need to sew the edges of the pleats. I have now moved into using polyviscose, which I absolutely adore. Minimal ironing and I feel that it gets a good swoosh. I always stitch my pleat edges with this fabric as well. The problem is that there are alot of very light PV fabrics out there which are not what you want to use. I would suggest looking into Marton Mills (The Xmarks PV fabric is wonderful). You can PM me and I have some other fabric sources that I have bought from online, but they are not advertisers on here so I wont post them.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to go with for fabric. Definately read the book first, as I started making kilts with no direction. Also, make sure that you post your questions on here as there are alot of great resources.

[Barb T]

Cortez

Welcome to XMarks! Good for you to learn how to make your own kilt! This is a great place for asking questions, and you can always email me, too, if you have questions. But, in terms of fabric, I can only underscore what everyone else has said. Cotton is a very unforgiving fabric for making a kilt using the instructions in my book. For a beginner, heavy weight wool kilting tartan is actually the easiest to make a kilt from, and, if you work carefully, you'll have a nice kilt when you're done, instead of a "test project".

If you want to try your hand at something using less tartan (less cost!), make a 4-yard box pleated kilt. You'll need to buy the book, but you can download the box pleat instructions for free that Matt Newsome and I wrote. You can download the box pleat pdf either from my web pages (http://people.hamilton.edu/btewksbu/personal/kiltmaking) or from the Scottish Tartans Museum (http://giftshop.scottishtartans.org/books.html)