Box pleats

[emeraldfalconoflight]

In a four yard box pleated kilt I do *not* cut out any cloth inside the pleats. The reason this is done on a standard eight yard kilt is because otherwise you'd end up with a huge bulk of material there at your back. It would simply be uncomfortable (trust me -- I've tried on a homemade kilt once where the person didn't do this).

With a four yard kilt, though (box pleated or knife pleated) that just isn't neccesary. In fact, leaving the cloth in not only gives you a bit more body, but it also (as Chase said) makes it easier to alter the kilt should you need to in the future.

In a "true" box pleated kilt, there should be little or no overlap in the pleats -- the pleat width should be about 1/3 the size of the sett, which would give you three layers of cloth at any given point in the back of the kilt. Not enough to warrant taking siccors to the cloth!

Aye,
Matt

Do you do four yarders in Irish National, or Henderson? If so how much would it be for a 42 inch waist or 44 inches?

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Sure, I can make the kilt out of pretty much any tartan that's out there, including these two. Irish National and Henderson are both available in heavy weight (16 oz) cloth. I'd need to get full measurements to confirm price, but assuming your hip measurement is 46" or less, it'd be $350 for the kilt.

You can PM or email me if you want to discuss the details.
Aye,
Matt

[emeraldfalconoflight]

are both pleated to stripe and set available. I realy would like the Henderson 4yder in pleated to stripe, but I do not know the actual width of the sett.

How long to get the material, make it, and to get it to me?

I would definately want the Henderson, is that a tartan you have readily available at your shoppe?

[M. A. C. Newsome]

You can get any tartan pleated to stripe or sett. I prefer pleating to the stripe in the box pleated kilts. So yes, that would be no problem.

Average turn around time is 8 to 12 weeks. I order all my cloth from the Scottish mills on an as-need basis, so either tartan would be just as easy to get.

Aye,
Matt

[Pleater]

:confused: Found this thread - even though the search function can't.

Don't understand though.

If I pleated 4 yards of fabric into box pleats which are only three thicknesses at any point I could do the whole length and still have enough to wrap - or perhaps I am missing something here?

Pleater

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I'm not sure I understand the question... can you elaborate? Thanks.

Matt

[Pleater]

First, thank for responding.

I have a 4 yard strip of fabric.

After marking the minimum width of the apron and under apron I put in the provisional 'nips' in order to form box fronts and folds, starting from the centre back join. (I round the size of pleats down to gain enough fabric for under apron pleats.)

This is the best aproximation in type I can make of the folds, seen edge on.

Inside of kilt
From the centre back ./_\/_\/_\ towards the under apron.
Outside of kilt.

The fabric is nipped together at the base of the Vs, with the _ being a single layer of fabric 3in wide, the box fronts, and the Vs are double and about 2.5inches high, being the 10 inches of fabric in the two 'wings'.

The result gives me five layers of fabric behind most of the back of the kilt - I chose a box width of 3 inches and each fold was 10 inches which is flattened into two 'wings' one each side of the 'nip' (which is just a few stitches at the waistband level to hold the provisional design)

Those wings overlap. They will have to, I think, if I am going to use the whole 4 yards.

When I put in the flare to the hip during the actual construction of my take on this design of kilt the amount of overlap will reduce but there will still be 5 layers in the centre of each box.

If I make the boxes so that the wing folds are half the front of the box, which gives me three layers of fabric all along the waistline, when I flare for the hip there will be areas of single fabric.

Using a 'no more than three layers of fabric' method it will use even less fabric for the back kilt than my original thought on this method, as each yard of fabric will become one foot of box pleating.

Have I made an eroneous asumption or design error?

Does the normal method just use less fabric than I assumed? ??:

Pleater

[Pleater]

Excuse any snafus - it has taken me 13 minutes to get here - something is slowing down this pc, and having sat down with a glass of schnapps after staying up all night I have drunk it and it has now drunk me whilst waiting.

Sucess - the camo fabric has been beaten into submission and it now looks like a box pleated kilt. Two of the seams are a bit skew wiff - and that was done sober - but I wasn't going to let it beat me - it looked easier than it was though.

Woow - always have had a light head but this is rediculous, drunk in charge of a pc - good morning officer (pc - police constable)

Right - having reported sucess I shall now reel off to bed - tomorrow - later today - I might have a third kilt ready to wear, once I have straightened the errent seams and fitted the fixings - and chosen a belt of suitable colour and apt construction. I might use my army webbing belt - even though I will have to polish the brass. I have some big brass eyelets and snaps somewhere - they might go rather well but they require a sober aim with the hammer for fitting.

I never used to be this vain before kilts!!

Veis heil - thats 'good health' in my native Yorkshire.

[Alan H]

Matt, if you're making a box pleat kilt out of a tartan with a larger sett, say 6 inches or larger, then it makes sense to have roughly a third of the set in each of the folds. OK, but if you have a tartan with a smaller sett, say 4.5 inches, that's going to make for a lot of narrow pleats that aren't very deep. How do you handle that sort of pattern? I'm guessing you pleat to a double sett, or, welll...just have a box pleateed kilt with a lot of narrow, shallow pleats!.

If you pleat to a double sett, do you wind up using more material?

[Pleater]

The 4.5 inch set could be box pleated with one set as the visible panel then one set folded under it at each side, so each complete panel takes 13.5 inches of fabric. You narrow it to the waist, but work to the panel, not pleats

That it the trick which took me so long to fathom out.

The hemline of the pleats is three layers. Wide or narrow, the pleats are always three layers, so there is no using more or less fabric with simple box pleats. I supose that narrow panels would use up a small amount more than large ones for the folds, but it would be fairly insignificant.

With a large set it might look best pleated to the stripe - with a 12 inch set you could have the centre of every set as a panel, 4 inches wide with 4 inches folded under it at each side.