With this being a lightweight kilt I would advise that you don't put sharp pleats in - in fact iron the fabric flat and let it lie in rounded folds - otherwise the edges of the fabric will wear, lose colour and threads will break fairly quickly.

You can't really treat a light weight fabric in the same way as a heavy one, and techniques suitable for a wook kilt don't work on a cotton one. The wool will deform out of a flat plane and allow you to shape it. Cotton will not.

My camo kilt is actually only sewn at the waistband and hem, the pleats lie free to move, but because the overlap around the body they tend to be almost organic and do conform to the underlying shape - possibly better than I could have sewn them down.

I iron the fabric flat as far up from the hem as I can get the iron into the pleats. I then let the lower part hang over the edge of the board and iron the top part as pleats so as to minimise the volume. Even without a tartan type pattern line to follow it is not difficult to see where the folds are.

This is me being frugal and wanting my kilts to last a good few years, if you don't mind making new lighweight kits maybe every two years then hammer in the folds and rivet them in place.