Different yardage? Pros, I need your help.

[beloitpiper]

Today my uncle and I were talking about kilts, as we frequently do, and he asked me a very interesting question that I could not answer. I thought I'd ask the professionals out there.

Is there a fabric difference depending on whether you pleat the to the sett or stripe?

He figured that they must be pleated differently to get the effect, and thought that maybe one had more than the other. I told him that I thought that they had the same amount of fabric, just with different pleat depths to get the desired effect.

So which is it? I'm looking at you Barb/Rocky/Newsome/etc.

[Paul Henry]

I think pleated to the sett does use more as determined by the size of the sett, where there can be a bit more forgiveness pleating to the stripe

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Barb covers this in her Art of Kiltmaking, I believe. There may be a slight difference, but it's really not signifigant.

[Pleater]

I too suspect that if you had to make a deeper pleat to create the sett you could then make the reveal larger - so there were fewer pleats compared with the pleated to stripe versions, but you would end up with the same length of fabric in the kilt.

The only problem I could see with getting a kilt out of the same length of material contrasting a sett with stripes arrangement would be that it is usual to have the pattern matching front and back, so where the apron had a sett across the centre, the pleats would have a sett in the centre.

That matching is almost bound to require extra length, or result in a shorter length of material in the kilt if the sett fell unfortunatly as the fabric was cut, or was an awkward size.

[James MacMillan]

The amount of required fabric is slightly different for each tartan, depending on the pleating option. If you are pleating to sett, it can be a standard formula, as you are reproducing the pattern in the reveal. But if you are picking one of multiple options of pleating to stripe, more factors come in to play.

But in general, the overal length of required fabric should still remain within inches of each other for each pleating style.

[Barb T]

First, there isn't a formula for pleating to the sett, because how you choose to repeat the sett in the pleats depends on the size of the pleats and how much taper they have. So, two kilts in the same tartan for two different people might look essentially the same from a distance but, it you were up close, you'd see that the kiltmaker chose to fold the pleats in different spots. That's what makes pleating the sett a challenge for beginning kiltmakers.

Second, because pleating to the sett takes up slightly more than one repeat per pleat, it takes more tartan to pleat to the sett for a given number of pleats than it does to pleat to the stripe (which takes exactly one repeat per pleat). So, if you want the same number of pleats, you need more tartan if you pleat to the sett. Conversely, if you have a given length of tartan, you'll get more pleats out of it if you pleat to the stripe (typically 2-4 more).

So, two kilts could have the same tartan and the same amount of fabric, but the one pleated to the sett would have fewer pleats, and, consequently, the pleats would be bigger.

Does that answer your question?

Barb

[beloitpiper]

Thanks, Barb! That answers it perfectly.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

hmmm... do you suppose that's why the military pleated to the stripe? A simple economy of yardage?

[beloitpiper]

No, like Barb said, they have the same amount of fabric. Stripes are just easier to pleat. Sett pleating takes more time.

[The Wizard of BC]

OK, I'm an engineer so I don't think like Barb. She actually knows what she is doing.
So I had to come up with some way to determine fabric requirements. So I did an Excel spreadsheet that will tell me up front how much fabric to order.

Now please remember, this is for one of my style kilts. It will be totally different than a Traditional the way Barb does it.

For example, these numbers are for a kilt order I took just today:
Given a person with a hip measurement of 49"
The apron will be 18" wide and there will be 31 pleats of 1" reveal.

Then if you use the Colquhoun Tartan which has a Sett of 6.125"

Pleating the the stripe will require 287.38" or 7.98 yards total fabric.

Making the exact same kilt but pleating to the Sett will require 318.38" or 8.84 yards total length.

Exactly the same kilt. Same pleat reveal, same no. of pleats. The only difference is the final look of the back of the kilt.