help with letting out the aprons

[Bobby Gordon]

Hello everyone.
I'm adjusting a kilt for a friend.
His waist is 41" and hips 42"
The pleat section on the kilt at the waist is 18" and on waist is 23"
Obviously the pleat section can't be adjusted, so all of the alteration is done in the aprons.
So do I make the waist 23" and the 19" on the aprons? Usually the waist is always smaller that the hips, but this would be a big difference between them and shaping would be upside down to how it's normally done!
Or do I make the both the waist and hips 23" with no shaping, and except the hips being 4" too big?
help!

[Pleater]

I read the post three times and it still doesn't make sense - there's something not quite right in the wording I think - or it could be that the midnight hour being fast approaching is the trouble.

It is not unusual for the hip measurement of a kilt to be larger than the measurement of the body, because the kilt is a skirt (sorry fellows) and it ought to hang vertically from the widest point of the body. It should lie easily but not loosely - so adding a little bit of ease so the garment is not under a lot of strain is advisable. If a man has a little bit of a bay window in front then the aprons need to be large enough to make a smooth curve around that. The kilt maker usually arranges for some obvious stripe or band of the tartan to be in the centre - so you might need to look at that before making the final decision about how to do the job.

The pleats are shaped into the back waist, and usually there is reinforcement and the pleats are sewn down, making the fell. The fell should end at the point where the rump stops curving outwards and then the pleats drop vertically from that level. If the pleats are done to the sett it is usual for the same feature to be centre back as the centre front of the apron.

If you could try to explain the measurements again - the measurement of the pleats and the apron at the hip and the waist would throw light on the problem - I hope.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bobby Gordon]

Hey Pleater. Many thanks for your reply. I shall try to explain things clearer:

The kilt was orriginally constructed for a 36" waist (18" in the apron, 18" in the pleats) and a 42" hip (19" in the apron, 23" in the pleats)

I have Bart T's "Art of Kiltmaking" book, and have made approximately 5 kilts using it, plus I have adjusted 12 or so other kilts using the alteration method she describes.

To make things easier to understand, let's say, ideally, the apron and the pleat section should look 'Pear shaped'. - Wider at the hips than the waist.

What I'm saying, though, is that he has now got a bigger belly, but he hasn't put on any weight on his bum.

So, in order to accommodate the new waist size, the alteration will be made in the apron, going from 18" to 23", so will have to be made 5" bigger, so each side will have 2.5" added. Simple enough.

BUT - and here is the problem, his hip size is unchanged. It's 42". So if 23 of those inches are already in the pleats, that means the apron only needs 19" in the apron.

So the apron will be 2" narrower on each side of the hips than the waist. or put simply, will look 'Hourglass shaped', which is weird, isn't it?

So do I go ahead and make the apron hourglass shaped? or do I make the hips on the apron 23", the same as the 23" on the waist as well? ie. no shaping in the aprons at all. Which will result in the total hip measurement in the kilt being 4" bigger than necessary.

[sydnie7]

This is going to be a funny looking kilt. You are talking about ending up with 23 in the waist apron side and only 18 in the pleats at the waist. Even if he has gained all his weight in the belly, it sounds as if the apron will be wrapping around past his "side seams." If you go ahead, do not make the apron narrower at hip than at waist. Straight up and down along the apron edges is OK -- the apron should fall straight toward the floor from his belly, not tuck in underneath it.

Generally the advice given here is to sell the too-small kilt and put that money toward one made to the new measure but I applaud your efforts in helping a friend stay kilted!

[The Wizard of BC]

If I may suggest another way to look at your problem -

If you have a copy of "The Art of Kiltmaking" - and you have made kilt before -

Go back to the basics.

You have your customers Waist and Hip measurements. Think of this just like starting a new kilt from scratch.

Calculate the splits for those measurements? Do this just as you would, starting a kilt from the very beginning.

Now, answer your own questions. Would these splits give you an apron narrower at the hip than at the waist? No, you would always make a kilt a gentle "A" shape and never a "V" shape.

And there is always some amount of shaping to the rear pleats of a kilt unless the hip and waist are the same. And even on most guys who seem to have the same measurements usually have a butt that would hit the wall first if they back up to one. The spine is almost always forward at the waist and rearward at the butt. So there is almost always some shaping to the pleats.

Now, look at the kilt you need to alter.

Do you have enough fabric in the outer and under apron facings to make the apron wider? Do you have enough fabric in the deep and reverse pleats to take some out to widen the aprons?

Then look at the pleats you have to work with. Is there enough fabric behind the pleats, where the cut-outs are, to allow you to widen each pleat very slightly?

You are not widening the the pleats at the hip as both hips are 42" . You are only adjusting the taper of each pleat. You are only making each pleat slightly wider at the waist.

And yes, you can unstitch the pleats and make a very large alteration by widening each pleat at the waist by just one or two twill lines.

Altering a kilt from a 36" waist out to a 41" waist is 5" or a 13% increase. That's quite a bit. Not impossible, but a lot.

If this alteration were mine I would seriously consider re-tapering the pleats.

[Pleater]

Ah - the light is ON.

Firstly - the aprons go straight down - they are not drawn in at the hips. They do not go where the tape measure goes.

Secondly you might be looking at a complete rebuild in order to get the extra circumference and it might be as well to sell the 36 inch and just buy a larger kilt. There is a lot of sewing to make a shaped kilt and if you have to take apart and then remake the kilt it is going to take a long time and not a little patience.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Barb T]

And, if he now has a belly, you should consider re-measuring his hips with the "towel method". Fold/roll up a towel, and use it to "fill" the space under his belly so that the towel sticks out just as far as his belly does. Measure around his hips around the towel as well. That will give you a hip measurement that is bigger than his waist and will allow the apron to hang straight down from his belly. That should allow you to re-build the apron with regular shaping - you _definitely_ don't want to have the waist bigger than the hips in the apron.

And, if it's really a lot of alteration, he'd be better off selling the kilt and using the proceeds to have a new one made.

[akwusmc]

Barb, that makes the most sense of anything I've imagined.

It seems that I, too have the same problem as the OP's friend and as I've read on what a proper kilt fit is I've wondered how to achieve it. Now I have more clues!

Anthony