Royal Stewart 5-yard kilt for cousin, a blow-by-blow

[Alan H]

First evening, .75 hour... TOTAL 0.75 hours:

Unpack the bag, drool, wish the material was for a kilt for ME (darnit) and iron it flat.... Figure out that I'm going to have to hem it, so turn up one edge and iron it up, even along both "sort-of-finished" edges....that all took half an hour, maybe call it 45 minutes....

Second evening, 1 hour....TOTAL 1.75 hours

Hand-blind stitch up the hem along about 5 feet of one side. I don't do anything fancy, it's not the "official certified sewers woo-hoo" blind stitch. I just stitch the thing up and try to catch only one or two threads on the outside. Nobody is going to bend down and inspect if my blind stitching is the official certified and authentic approved method. What they WILL notice is if the hem falls out. It won't. Works for me. If it takes me an hour to do five feet, and there's fifteen feet of this stuff, then I'll be spending about 3 hours hand-blind-stitching this hem. Bleah, but if I don't do it by hand, it'll show and I want this kilt to be nicer than that.

Third Morning, 1 hours....TOTAL 2.75 hours

Well, I'm not done with the hemming, but what the heck. I swept the floor and vacuumed it up, then laid the fabric out. I measured up 24 inches from the hem fold-overs and cut out two, "almost 2.5 yard" pieces. I still can't bring myself to rip tartan. Anyway, I then put the two pieces on the sewing machine, and double-zig-zagged the raw edges where the two pieces were to be joined together. Now they won't unravel. I then overlapped them and pinned them every few inches, and ran a line of straight stitching down the overlap to join the pieces. I tossed in a pretty wide line of zig-zag to *really* attach the pieces and make triple sure that nothing ever unravels. I then rolled up the now 14 feet, 8-inch long piece and dropped it in my kilt-sewing box.

[chasem]

I still can't bring myself to rip tartan.

It does seem very frightening the first time. But, as long as it's good quality wool, ripping is the best way to go. Gives you a perfectly straight line (*so* hard to do when cutting with scissors). But I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know

I love these threads though, Alan. Will definitely be keeping up with great interest. It's just fun to see what other "homegrown" kiltmakers are up to.

[sydnie7]

Ditto on the ripping tartan shivers. Couldn't do it the first time -- in fact, my sister had to pick up the scissors and make the cut, couldn't even bring myself to that point but second time around, I gritted my teeth, made a little starter snip, and ripped that sucker like a pro.

As the golfers say -- grip it and rip it!

Of course, AFAIK it only works for wool. Don't try it on PV or any other tartan fabric variants.

Looking forward to the rest of the story (as long as you don't do it Paul Harvey style LOL)

[Carolina Kiltman]

Amen to trying to rip anything other than wool (or cotton for that matter)! I remember, as a wee laddie going with my Mother to a dry goods shop (fabric store in modern parlance), and the clerk would measure off the fabric, cut the selvedge with sicissors, then rip it to the far selvedge, and cut that. It always facinated me.

Second: the real reason they call it blind stitching is that you go blind doing it!

I am looking forward to future installments!

[Mipi]

t!

Of course, AFAIK it only works for wool. Don't try it on PV or any other tartan fabric variants.

I've tried to rip Wool/Poly fabric and it just doesn't rip well.