Sorry if I was not clear about cloth arriving skewed - we usually get fabric rolled onto cardbord tubes or rectangles in our shops - if it is put onto those carelessly it can end up with the grain pulled off square, and it takes some work to get it back on the straight - if cut as it is the thread gradually works its way back to being straight and the garment becomes crooked.

I suspect that it is the denim cloth which is resistant to being bent into shape when in three layers.

I did think of different options - like making every other pleat dead straight and the alternate ones have double the taper, and then let them fight it out between them as to how the kilt sits.

Beware though - I experiment - it is just an idea.

Yes it is logical that if you pull each knife pleat the same way that you will end up with a garment that lies in a curve, but that is in two dimensions - you want to shape the fell into a three dimensional shape - part of a cone.

You need to be using the narrow curved end of the ironing board to press in that shape - and it does involve encouraging the cloth to distort.

The basic problem is that the kilt was designed for woolen cloth which is quite happy to be tailored into three dimensional shapes. Woolen cloth will stretch and/or narrow under heat, steam and pressure and look none the worse for it. Translating a kilt shape into a rigid cotton and you are actually pushing the boundaries of the design.

It is an engineering problem - I can 'see' that the pleats have to hang from a line on the body - that line being the width of one pleat at the place where it ceases to be in contact with the body and hangs straight down under the influence of gravity.

To hang straight the pleat needs to have certain elements.

It must not be distorted by pulls from adjacent pleats - indicating that there is too little fabric, when folded, to cover the circumference. Likewise it does not need extra fabric over what is required, otherwise it will tend to buckle in order to narrow itself.

The grain of the fabric needs to be horisontal at the line it leaves the body, so it lies right. Likewise the edges of the pleat need to lie on the vertical grain of the cloth, or be sewn in permanently.

There should be a suporting part of the pleat, above the line, which has to hold the lower pleat correctly as well as cope with the change in the body shape. It is the tailoring of that upper part - the fell - which is the kiltmakers' art.

I hope that cutting along the straight grain of the inner fold will rob the pleats of reistance to being twisted into the correct shape.

Failing that cutting away some more of the pleats and joining the kilt to something the right shape so it can't twist is looking good.

I'm beginning to think of riveting pleats to the top six inches of a pair of jeans and then cutting off the surplus. Or maybe glue would do it.