You bet ya Barb! The education that I'm going through has enlightened me to a LOAD of kiltmaking methods that I never even dreamed of. The time and effort that it takes to properly make a kilt fit is so much more than I imagined.

The hardest time that I had was making kilts maintain the pattern, while properly fitting hips that were either non-existant... or VERY large. The difference in the two was enough to give me a headache! If the taper "pulls" at the top were not done properly, then the pleats would wander in-an-out... especially on larger hips. If it wasn't for the instruction from the Master Kiltmakers, I think I would have hemmoraged! Thankfully, their YEARS of actually making kilts has saved me years of torture.

The difference in the designation between "Traditional" and "Formal" is a simple designation. "Traditional" is what we get from the educated, certified and talented kiltmakers. Hamish can attest to the quality, education and talent of these folks since he's privvy to their ears. "Formal" is what we get when a kilt is made to look like a traditional without the materials, education, talent, or time. Those are not XMarks designations... but ones that came from Lyon.

IF you browse through a load of pictures on sites, you'll see how some pleats will wander around like a fish out of water. Others, like the Cape Breton BearKilt in my gallery, are tight, smooth, and straight. Honestly, the thing looks like it's solid material in the back since the pleats are SO tight. Hopefully Bear can chime-in on HIS OWN designing, and how he's able to do this! In fact, BOTH of my BearKilts are tighter than a Scottsman on his last nickle.

There will be a few methods that I'm not going to post (and I'll let you know) as they're propietary to the company that's educating me. That's an agreement that I have with them to keep my education costs down. I intend to use them in late 2005. For now, the major beefs that customers have against some kilt makers is their inability to make the aprons NOT curl at the tips, make the pleats hang straight, make the tartan patterns line-up, all while making the kilts actually fit the waist and hips. No names.