Quote Originally Posted by Barb T. View Post
So, personally, I would cut the # of pleats down.

BTW - what is the # of inches in the sett, and what's the weight of the tartan?

Also - I assume from the 18" that you need for the pleats that your hip measurement is about 35-36"?
Hi, Barb,

Thanks for answering! This kilt is for me, with a 38 inch waist and 42 inch hips. Here are the calculations that I'd made. If anything isn't right (or is right but... odd.) please let me know. I'd welcome suggestions.

inches apron pleats
waist 38 20 18
hips 42 21 21

fell 7 1/4"

I'm a short, stocky guy.

The original tartan was 4 metres of double-width, giving me a bit less than 8 metres to work with. The sett is right at 6 1/2". It's 16 oz. wool from ScotWeb.

What it boils down to, at this point, is that I believe I'm going to make a mistake if I jump up and down on this poor kilt and try to jam every inch of that tartan into it. Assuming I go to a 1" reveal at the hips (with the current split), that would mean getting rid of 12 pleats, or about 1 yard of material. Since I'm working with two tartan halves at this point, I'd assume that I'd want to take 6 setts off of the end of the left half of the tartan, and 6 setts off of the beginning half of the right tartan. Does that sound right?

And, for those that know better and have done the math before, do the splits look right?

Thanks again for the comments, everyone!

Brian