What's all the hubub about hand stiching?

[thescot]

I have both inexpensive, machine sewn kilts and fully hand sewn kilts. I won't purchase a machine sewn again unless it's for mud wrestling or something that will ruin a good kilt. I don't mean to be disparaging the machine sewn varieties so much as expressing my strong preference for the fine craftmanship of traditional hand sewing.

All three of my fine kilts are works of art from three different craftsmen: House of Edgar, William MacIntosh (now retired), and Barb Tewksbury. I love the look, the sway, and the overall quality of them. The other two--and Leatherneck wool from SWK and a Gordon heavy weight from WPG--are good kilts, but not of the superior quality of the others.

I know you can purchase very good machine sewn kilts, but to me it's similar to good suits: you can buy a functional, fairly good suit from J. C. Penney--and I have--or you can buy a fine suit from Hickey Freeman. Both cover your body, but there is no comparison to the total end product. Nor are they intended to be the same.

I would encourage you to hold out for a good, hand made kilt from a really good kilt maker. It will last forever (metaphorically speaking) if you take good care of it.

[Barb T]

In a trad kilt, the pleat stitching is not supposed to show. If you machine stitch the pleats from the outside, the line of stitching shows. If you hand stitch carefully, the stitches don't show. That's why trad kilts are hand stitched.

Having said this, Rocky makes his kilts by machine stitching the pleats from the _inside_ so that the stitches don't show. It is really really hard to get the stripes to line up perfectly doing it this way, but Rocky has gotten really really good at it. He does it because he doesn't like hand stitching, not because it's any faster (he says that he rips out about 1 in 6 pleats) or because it's any stronger.

I can stitch 5-6 pleats an hour by hand. I could probably do only about 2 an hour net if I tried to do it Rocky's way!