Questions about using canvas duck material

[Southern Breeze]

If you're using a sewing machine use heavy duty needles. I learned this the hard way.

[Alan H]

I sewed the fell on my canvas kilt, but not down low enough.

HINT: focus on the BUTT measurement. errrr. "hip" measurement, sorry.

I'm going to make my next canvas or general cotton twill kilt like this.

1.) I start with plenty of material. Cloth is cheap compared to time when it's only $ a yard.
2.) work out my "splits" as per Barbs formulas in her book. Round off the splits to the nearest inch, being generous, not skimpy,.
3.) Cut myself a 28-inch width of at least 6 yards. The selvedge will be the bottom
4.) serge the raw cut edge, and fold it over 3 inches. Iron that baby down hard
5.) Allow 2.5 feet for the under-apron, and start pleating.

6.) Make pleats with a 1-inch reveal, and at least 4 inches of cloth inside each pleat. With my splits I'm going to have about 24 pleats. Or I (read: you) could go for a 1.5 inch reveal and have 16 pleats with at least 4 inches of cloth inside each pleat.. For a canvas kilt, that makes better sense than 24 pleats.

7.) pleat and stitch the bottom of the fell. By that I mean go one pleat at a time all the way around the kilt but ONLY machine-stitch the bottom one inch of the fell. Just tack that baby down, this is a canvas kilt, don't bother with hidden stitches by hand. work in an even taper on each pleat by eyeballing it, you only want about .20 of an inch, and straight-pin each of them in place. One pin goes into each pleat at the waistband, one goes halfway down the fell.

8.) Make a BIG reverse pleat...at least 4 inches tucked under at each side, so this is going to eat up material, 16 inches of it. PIN this one, bigtime down the bottom of the fells again. don't stitch it yet.

Now haul the thing off the table, drop your trousers, and wrap the thing around you. Is it gonna fit around her hiney? If so, cool. If not, then unpin the reverse pleat and add one more pleat, or rip out one pleat until it fits. One pleat one way of the other isn't gonna kill a kilt, and each pleat will buy you 1 to 1.5 inches of room one way or another.

9). When you've decided it fits, then stitch in the reverse pleat.

10.) you worked in tapers by hand for each pleat and pinned 'em in. Now I'd go back and work those things, one or two at a time to be drop-dead straight, pin 'em some more and then stitch them down on the machine. When you're done with that you've got your pleats, and they're tapered.

If your hip measurement isn't 4-6 inches larger than your waist measurement, this isn't gonna work, and you'll have to make adjustment, of course.

I'll leave the A-shaping, pressing and apron construction to others, but I think this is how I'm going to do the pleats on my next cotton kilt. It'll be an experiment.