pleated to the "dreaded lawn chair effect"

[JohnClanFarquharson]

Here you go - a picture is worth 1000 words, as they say....

Ive never seen the lawn chair effect before, wow lol.

[Todd Bradshaw]

I must be dense, but I'm still not really sure what you are talking about, or what is so bad about it.

[Terry Searl]

We haven't quite got that far yet have we Steve

[Barb T]

I must be dense, but I'm still not really sure what you are talking about, or what is so bad about it.

When a kilt is pleated to a solid color block or a stripe that fades into the background, the horizontal stripes dominate. That can make a really pleasing kilt, and I make lots of kilts like this for people. You can see several at the beginning of this post that look GREAT pleated that way. Todd - I've made several kilts for you pleated to the solid block, and they definitely _don't_ have the lawn chair effect. They look terrific pleated to the solid color block.

There are many tartans, however, that have a solid block that contrasts very strongly with a set of stripes that are also themselves internally contrasty (like the one in the pic with the chair). The effect across the back of the kilt is like the plastic stripes on a lawn chair. Personally, I don't like that effect, and I recommend pleating to the solid color block only when it won't make that wide, contrasty, stripey effect across the back of the kilt.

Does that help?

[Todd Bradshaw]

I guess so, though I have to admit that the rather bold horizontals across the back sides of my kilts are one of the things I really like most about them. Like tailfeathers!.........(although the grey one pleated to the sett ain't half-bad either )

I guess it's a matter of degree then, as the example above does seem to come off as rather too much, to put it kindly.

[Father Bill]

Yes, but yours don't have the contrasting colour combinations of a lawnchair.

[Barb T]

To me, Todd's kilts don't have "lawn chair". And yes, it's a matter of degree. Any kilt pleated to the solid color block will have only a horizontal pattern. But there's a difference between a pleasing effect and one that looks like plastic lawn chair strips. It's in part of matter of color contrast, but Todd's kilts do have some strong color contrasts and they don't look "lawn chair-y". I think the reason is that the brighter of the two stripes in his kilts does not have lots of contrasty stripes within it.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Then again... one man's lawn chair is another man's space shuttle.



In any case, we never, ever, go to a highland games without getting stopped by several perfect strangers throughout the day who just want to tell me what a gorgeous kilt I'm wearing - regardless of which one it is. On the grey one, preliminary pleating tests seemed to indicate that the somewhat more subtle colors tended to lessen the horizontals enough to potentially make the back look rather washed out - which is why I asked Barb to pleat it to the sett instead, and get a bit more color back there.

I think my pet gripe is more a matter of not being fond of kilts where the front and back seem to be two drastically different colors, due to the pleating. Personally, I don't care if they're pleated to the stripe or the sett, vertical or horizontal emphasis, as long as the overall color values seem to carry through and compliment each other. Naturally, I'm sure there are folks who think the "black on one side, white on the other" sort of thing is really neat. To each their own.

[The Wizard of BC]

This is the original picture Terry sent to me as we were talking about how he wanted his next kilt to be pleated.



And it was this photo which lead to this discussion. I call this "The Maple Leaf thing".

[Taskr]

The lack of any vertical element being visible from the ML tartan doesn't work for me. Was looking at tartan images to see if there is a different colour that might show better. If pleated along the red vertical instead, or is that too narrow?

Great discussion with helpful hints and guidance to pleating when I get there.