SWK Thrifty kilt and accessories JUST IN!

[Oddern]

Congrats on your new kilt. I would recomend sewing the pleats by hand. It's not that difficult. Divide the length of the pleats in 3. The upper 1/3 of the pleats are to be sewn down. Sew from the outside, small stiches along the edge of the pleats and through all layers of fabric. Good idea to leave the bastings in until you ahve sewn the pleats.
Sorry I have no pics to illustrate. Let's see if Allen comes back with some pics.
Skål!

[Whidbey78]

That took a lot longer than I expected. Photobucket was slooooooooooow.

I wish I could show this in an "exploded" view, but that would require tearing down one of my kilts. Ain't happenin'.

Okay, first, here's the Wallace I was talking about. If you look at the yellow stripes below the buckle you can see the skewing I referred to. Like I said, this is a threadbare knock-around kilt that actually doesn't fit anymore. It shrunk...I don't care what my wife says!


You can sew it down from the outside like in this pic. It's hard to see but on the right edge of each pleat you can see a line of stitches about 1/8 inch from the edge. This is the easy way to do it.


Make sure the stitches end at the same point on each pleat. With tartan it's easy--just use the pattern for reference.


You'll get a nicer finished product--more like a tank--if you do the stitches inside the pleat. The stitches will be hidden from view because they are underneath the outermost layer of fabric in the pleat you are sewing. Basically, from the inside side of the kilt, open up the pleat like this, and stitch it through the next pleat right where it's creased(between my thumb and finger in the pic). An easier way to picture it is that the stitch is just like the ones pictured above, except that they don't run through the outermost layer of fabric. If you picture a cross-section of the pleats, imagine it stitched like above...now just move the top of the stitches one layer down. I hope that helps a little.



Here is basically the same thing on my USAK Oakleigh. It dawned on me right before I was going to post this that red doesn't photograph well with a flash, so I stripped off the one I was wearing and snapped a couple of pics.

You can see the stitching along the right-hand edge of the pleat.


This is like the above pic--if you want to hide the stitches they should pass through the next pleat right where it's creased.


This one illustrates another thing to keep in mind. Whether you stitch the pleat down from the inside or have the stitches visible, only stitch through the next pleat. If the second pleat down is deep enough to reach where you're stitching move it out of the way. Stitching through more than the next pleat can create issues with how they all hang...not always. Sometimes you CAN do this and you won't have to do any steeking, but it depends on how it fits you. That's more than we need to get into here.


I would advise stitching the fell on the outside. It's much easier, and the finished product is still good. There are many ways to mess up when stitching the inside of the pleat if you haven't done it before. Hand stitching it is easy, just take your time so the stitches are even. You already have a tank, so a SWK certainly can't compete for top spot in your wardrobe anyhow.

If you machine stitch it, keep the pressure light, tension light, use a teflon foot(or better yet a walking foot) and if you can get the low-temp seam tape use it to prevent skewing like I have on the Wallace. Basically, wherever you run a stitch, have a layer of tape between every layer of fabric so they all stay where you want them. It helps a lot. I recently finished a kilt for my son and had to do that. The lines got badly distorted as the foot dragged the top layer of fabric around, so I ripped the stitches out and used the tape and they stayed dead perfect. I would have a pic, but I can't get to it without waking the little guy up.

Hopefully that cleared it up a little. Look through the tutorials and such on the forum. Somewhere on here someone probably has a better set of pics.

One last thing...when figuring out how far to sew the fell the rule of thumb is to go 1/3 of the way down from the waist. Most often that works fine, but I'm one of those odd-build guys and that puts it a bit low. One way to make sure it's in the right spot is to put it on, stand in front of a mirror, llooking at your backside. Figure out where the widest point (biggest circumference) is, and put a chalk mark, piece of tape or a pin at that point. Since it's tartan all you need is one mark somewhere. Stitch each pleat down to that point in the pattern. In the pics of the wallace it's at the bottom of the second black stripe--strangely that's where it is on the Oakliegh too. Anyhow, that's the easiest way to do it.

Now, I had better put my kilt back on, or shut the window, before the neighbors see me.

Good luck brother.