Sometimes when I start to pin a kilt all my intentions just evaporate and it is almost as though the design which emerges is something that the cloth itself designed.

That is how a perfectly ordinary 20 pleats became a 50 pleat mirror imaged reverse Kingussie, where the reveal is grey and black but the pleats flash alternately red and white.

I don't usually get a bit Zen about making clothes, but sometimes the kilt seems to make up its own mind about how to create pleats to that particular size in that particular tartan.

Anne the Pleater