Ironing a PV Kilt

[Dan R Porter]

Thanks rocky. I have never owned a hemmed kilt so this will be a learning experience. do you hem all your kilts?

[Pleater]

Early on in my kilting career I bought a kilt of man made fibre - it was a total waste of money, but just to put the mouldy cherry on the top of the stale cake, it had been pressed with an iron that was too hot, so the fabric was polished - due to it being melted slightly.

Man made fibres are usually pressed dry - wool required steam pressing, but man made fibres can react badly to it.

Always always put a cloth between the iron and the fabric to prevent polishing the surface. If you polish the outside it looks horrible, but polishing the inside can make the fabric feel prickly against the skin as fibres have been sharpened into chisel edges.

As the kilt is hemmed, when it arrives you can mark each pleat by sewing a few stitches of contrasting thread into the hem only, behind each of the folds. You can then see exactly where to fold the edge even if there are several posibilities. It is a bit of a fiddly job, but you might be glad you did it eventually.

Careful hanging of the kilt after washing also pays dividends, as does preening the pleats during drying to get them into place whilst the fibres are damp.

Anne the Pleater

[RockyR]

Thanks rocky. I have never owned a hemmed kilt so this will be a learning experience. do you hem all your kilts?

No... we just got the blind stitch machine about a month or so ago, so we've only hemmed a few. I normally don't hem the PV unless the customer specifies (and usually charge a few bucks for the extra work). However, in this case, the solid color kilts look much better hemmed (vs. the frayed selvedge), so I hemmed it.

Pleater... I'm surprised to hear you say that most man made fibres are dry ironed (no steam). Granted, I don't press ANYthing except kilts that I make and I don't think I own anything else that's synthetic fibre that would require pressing other than my PV kilts... however, the material we use (MM PV) takes very well to a steam iron on a medium setting. I've actually TRIED to 'dry iron it' (when the water to our gravity feed iron ran out and I didn't notice) and it doesn't do NEARLY as good of a job on the same heat setting.

As I said above however, the only thing that's special about the Saffron is you SHOULD USE a press cloth to make sure there's no discoloration or 'shininess' to the fabric.

[Dan R Porter]

Well thanks for the extra work ROcky. I know I have a quality kilt in the mail...it is in the mail?.. ugh the jones hurts. 3 days down.

[The Wizard of BC]

I too use steam on Marton Mills Polyester/Rayon fabric.

But then again I have an industrial iron as does Rocky. I find that with the steam generated in a seperate boiler it allows me to keep the sole plate of the iron cooler in relation to home irons that rely on the heat in the sole plate to generate the steam.

I too find that the Marton Mills fabrics take steam shaping quite well. Now, these fabrics are basically plastic but I find that they will take a compound curve such as that found in in apron edge tapering. None of my Poly/Cotton or Cotton fabrics will do this at all.
The amount of shaping and molding is not a much as with Wool but amazing if you have ever worked with fibers such as Acrylic.

The Marton Mills Polyester/Rayon blend Tartan fabrics really are in a class by themselves.

I have found that a teflon sole plate will replace a press cloth in almost every instance. I have yet to get a sheen on the fabric using it.

My technique is to use the steam to heat the fabric. Because steam is always the same tempurature the contol is very exact. And becasue the sole plate of the iron is at a lower temp. it is almost impossible to melt the fabric which is what would produce the sheen.

Please note that I said "almost" impossible to melt the fabric. There was that one time when I was folding over a hem of the X Marks Tartan. I had 12 yards double width fabric draped over my ironing table. The excess was in folds on the floor on each side. Then a customer entered the shop. I set the iron up on top of the boiler where it belongs and went to greet my customer. A half hour later I return to my hemming job to find the iron had fallen to the floor on top of 7 layers of fabric. That length of fabric now has iron shaped brown burns every 4 feet of its length and there is a nice iron shaped dark spot in the Fir Flooring.