Military box pleat trial

[Pleater]

Having had to use what I could find on the internet, my experience from previous sewing, and then spend time just 'fiddling' using what fabric I had and a lot of pins, I would advise that you just experiment - use any bit of cloth to fold and cut and see what happens - you can get lots of bits of stuff from the charity shops - assuming you have some close by.

Failing that you might have an old sheet - or you might even try out a thought on some spare wallpaper.

I have definitely settled into making reverse Kinguisse style kilts, about 7 yards, with no internal reinforcing just a sturdy belt.

I tend to use cotton, sewing the edges of the pleats, as the weather is so mild that I find even 50 percent wool too hot.

Perhaps I will feel the cold more if I get thinner.

As yet I have not cut out the back of the pleats, as I have been regularly returning kilts to straight cloth and remaking them smaller, So can't give any advice on the excess fabric.

However...

The purpose of cutting the pleats is to thin out the fell, to smooth the garment outline and I suspect reduce the insulation. I would tend to look at cutting the inner parts of the pleats, that is the cloth which is not on either the inner nor the outer faces. There would then be an unbroken layer of cloth both sides but not so many layers. On an ordinary pleat raw edges are left inside and need to be covered. It might be more satisfactory to retain more of the kilt material and - although it would mean hand sewing, form a smooth surface inside the kilt.

[Kilted KT]

This is one hugely ambitious project, and looks like the end result is gonna be a great looking kilt!

I eagerly anticipate more pics!

[switchblade5984]

more pics!

looking good

[Pleater]

I have been thinking about the cutting out - as I folded up a bit of cloth and found I had NINE(!!!) layers.

I think what I would do is make up the cloth into knife pleats and tack along the folds, that is sew with large stitches in a contrast colour for later removal.

I would then cut out the front of each pleat, from about 1/4 inch from the front fold to 1/4 inch from the back fold, and almost as deep as the sewn fell.

The edges of the cut part will need to be sewn to keep the edges from fraying, but at just what part of the operation will need to be experimented with.

Refold the pleats, first as knife pleats and secure the back fold of each pleat to the single layer of fabric in front of it with a couple of stitches, then pin out the widening to the hip, then make the turning back of the front fold which should hide the cut out completely - I think.... but I am not quite sure how the supression and folds are organised yet.

It will take a couple of attampts with scrap fabric to get right when I eventually decide to make one of these, but I am looking forward to it as it looks to be a very interesting pleat design problem as well as an interesting style of kilt

[way2fractious]

I had NINE(!!!) layers.

Yes, the number of layers is astounding... and it's nice to have another mind working on the problem.

As you can see, the boxed turnback on the pleats below the fell carries upward above the fell, too. I'm slowly working on the problems of 1) how much to cut out and 2) which way to lay and overlap the remainders. Wool will go any way one desires it to go - with enough steam and pressure. With simple knife pleats, it is easy and Barb's book illustrates everything beautifully, but with military box pleats, the pleats are sewn singly (ie., without the next pleat folded prior to sewing through all layers) in order to allow the fabric to reverse directions for the box.

These problems are to be worked out on scraps before I sew another one of these kilts. The current one will be finished soon (even with its mistakes) and will probably look O.K.