Military Box Pleats

[Michael A]

A Royal Regiment of Scotland, Black Watch Tartan kilt with military box pleats.

On this kilt the fold within the pleat is the full depth.

Hi Steve,

Do you do the steeking on this as for a knife pleat?

[Barb T]

So on the back of this kilt and other "military" box pleats, may I presume they cut the pleats in the fell and do the steeking as for a knife pleat, rather than the traditional box pleat steeking?

I honestly don't know - I've never taken apart a military box pleated kilt, but it seems like you'd pretty much have to cut out the pleats, or you'd have even more bulk in the fell than in a regular kilt.

Steve - what do the military box pleated kilts that you've taken apart look like inside under the lining?

[The Wizard of BC]

I have had an opportunity to see inside 2 older military kilts and 2 of the newer RRS kilts. All four were pleated to Military box pleat or un-even leg box pleats. One was originally pleated this way but someone had re-pressed the pleats to knife pleats,

Actually I was surprised. In the older kilts there was no interfacing at all. There was a stabilizer but it was just a strip of linen lightly tacked in place. The reason I had to open both of these kilts was that they had been altered by someone who did not know or understand that buckles have to be sewn through the outer fabric and into the stabilizer. Both of the old kilts had suffered failures of the Fell stitching due to the buckles sewn back on, after alteration, to the outer fabric only. Both also had very serious deformation of the aprons due to the lack of any re-reinforcement at all.

The Pleats were cut away. There was Steeking but not in the way we think of it today. It was very loosely sewn in. Almost tacking. All of the internal stitching on these kilts that I have seen has been with coarse cotton thread. Almost a yarn. Most was rotten.

The RRS kilts I opened had to be altered for size. The customer presented me with two kilts and asked me to use fabric from one to increase the size of the other.
To my surprise I found that one kilt is almost completely machine sewn. On one kilt the Fell stitching is done with a technique called blind machine stitching. The pleat is sewn in place open and then folded back to hide the line of stitching. Each pleat was then cut away before sewing the next. The other kilt had traditional hand stitched pleats but machine stitching almost everywhere else. . They had different contract numbers and I do not know the years of make.
The interfacing and stabilizer of the new RRS kilts are cut from the same fabric. A coarse plain weave about like burlap bags. I suspect it was linen.

There is no one that can claim that these kilts were not full traditional kilts. But I'm afraid I did not view the construction very highly.

[Michael A]

That is very interesting Steve - thank you.

[The Wizard of BC]

And yes Michael, if you cut away the pleats to thin the back of the kilt you must do the steeking. It hold the cut ends of the inside of the pleats and prevents them from sagging under their own weight. Steeking is the little secret in Traditional and Contemporary kiltmaking that keeps the pleats straight and parallel.

(oh, and I am using Contemporary in the way I coined it. A traditional kilt modified to take into account Durability, Fit, Fabric and Pockets.)

[Michael A]

Yes I understand why we do the steeking, but a trad box pleat is "steeked" (is "steek" a strong or week verb, as I usually only see it as the gerund?) a different way to a knife pleat. But given the deliberate overlap of the wrong side of the pleats for a military box pleat, it would be sensible to do it the same way as knife pleats, I think.

[Barb T]

The way I learned box pleating from Matt Newsome, the steeking is done without cutting out the pleats - no need to because there isn't the bulk of a trad knife pleated kilt. So, the steeking doesn't do the same thing in a box pleated kilt because there are no cut-out pleats to keep from sagging. The main thing that the steeking in a box pleated kilt does it to provide strain relief across the stitching at the bottom of the fell. in the pics below, the pleat stitching is behind the long horizontal threads, so any horizontal stress at that point is partly supported by the floating thread and not entirely by the pleat stitching.

[Michael A]

Yes I do that too for traditional box pleats, as per Matt's and your book.



But I was asking about military box pleats, with significant overlap, so it would be probably like knife pleat steeking.

[Barb T]

Yes, sorry. I thought Steve answered that question. I would do the steeking the same as a knife pleated kilt. I was just clarifying for others who read these posts what the purpose of the steeking in a box pleated kilt is.

[Michael A]

Oh sorry. All good.