Following Barb T.'s book...

[Barb T]

Hi Phil

When I stitch pleats, I actually use quite a few pins. It doesn't say that in my book, because my co-author, Elsie, has conniptions whenever she sees people pinning pleats. When she apprenticed in Glasgow in the 40s, her instructors beat into her that it cost time (and therefore money) to pin pleats, so she learned to put a pin at the top and a pin at the bottom and hold tight in the middle.

Me, I find that I actually pleat _faster_ if I take a few seconds to pin the pleat about roughly every 2 inches at a stripe (largely because I don't have to go back and take stuff out). And I even am anal enough to _measure_ to make sure that a centered stripe is actually centered after I pin it at 4 or 5 places along the pleat. Even on a kilt with a long fell, I do 5-6 pleats an hour, which is plenty fast enough for me, so I just don't worry about it. This is one place I don't agree with Elsie, particularly for beginners.

So, in the revision of the book, I am going to have a box about pinning pleats, but I left it out of the first edition because Elsie was adamant about not having it in.

Try that, and see how it works. It's _particularly_ important for kilts pleated to the stripe.

Also, I think 1/2" pleats at the hips are pretty tiny. Most traditional kilts have pleats that are more like 3/4" or more at the hips. Even if you don't use all your tartan (if, for example, it has a really small sett), I think your kilt will look better.

Any other questions, just ask!!

Barb

[Barb T]

Forgot to say something about Matt's post on pleat width. I understand his point about the original kilts having wider pleats and less material. But, in the modern world, what we think of as "traditional" has narrower pleats and more material. So, if you have a kilt that _doesn't_ look like that, it doesn't look like what _we_ now think of a kilt as looking like.

Barb

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Right, Barb, understood. However, I just wanted to make the point that this distinction between 4-yards being casual and 8-yard being formal is a false one. A good, *hand tailored* four yard kilt can be worn to any formal occasion just as an 8-yard. It all depends on the accessories.
M

[Phil Wright]

Phew! I feel a lot better now I can pin! I also found that as I was trying to pull the pinned ends were fine but the cloth 'moved' as I stitched ending up with a bulge at the middle. I tried tacking along the pleat edges to hold the tartan together which seemed to work a bit better too.(Probably also not officially recommended.)
Thanks for the advice.
Phil