Quote Originally Posted by hmonroe View Post
Does anyone have any thoughts on my calculations for the fabric amount?

26" waist, 39" hip -> 16" of pleating at waist, 24" of pleating at hip to get ~60% pleats (more feminine, will allow for future weight gain). So if I want 1" wide pleats at the hip, I need 24 pleats with 2 pleats per 8.25" = 24*(8.25"/2) = 99" for the pleating and (40"-24")*2 = 32" for the two aprons -> 3.7 yards/3.4 meters for both. I was thinking about getting 4 meters (4.4 yards) which would give me an extra 26.5" for apron pleats, fringe, centering front apron, etc. Do you think that's enough?
If this were a traditional kilt, you would have about 20" of pleats. Having 24" of pleats would look odd in a trad kilt on someone your size and would make the apron look unusually small (like the kilt was made for someone bigger than you, and you took in the apron to make it 4" smaller). Having said that, I don't know if you are actually interested in making a trad kilt, so it depends on whether you want this to look like a traditional kilt or not. You can, of course, make it any way you want.

If you decide to make it 60% pleats in order to let it out for future weight gain, you will need to put extra fabric into the facing of the apron and underapron, plus put in a hidden pleat in both the apron and underapron to store enough tartan to make the apron bigger in the future. You can't just switch some pleats into a bigger apron, because all the pleats will be cut out to reduce bulk in the pleats above the bottom of the fell.

If you were making a trad knife pleated kilt or a reverse Kingussie, you would need more than a yard each for the apron and a yard for the underapron (and that's not counting a hidden pleat and extra-large facings), plus tartan for the pleats. If you had 1" pleats at 1 pleat per sett (as per your later post), you would need 20x8.25" = 4.6 yards for the pleats. So, at a minimum, you would need about 7 yards for someone your size. I would, for example, buy 6 yards of tartan for an 10-year-old Highland dancer. That's just a comparison for what I would use for a trad kilt. If you don't want to make a trad kilt, of course, you could make do with however much you wanted to buy.

I assume that single width tartan will make a kilt long enough for what you have in mind?

Just want to warn you that there are actually no instructions in the book for a reverse Kingussie, so you would have to wing the layout, the 2nd half of the pleats, the basting, the steeking, etc.