Pleating challenges #1: dealing with a too-wide central stripe

[ChattanCat]

Barb,
You certainly solved a difficult problem and made it look easy. I gave up on trying to pleat to the sett on my MacPherson. Maybe I will try it again some day.

Thanks.

[turpin]

Great job as usual Barb - a question if you don't mind.

How do you taper to the pleats holding the triple yellow stripe?

It looks like she tapered on th eoutside only for the triple yellow stripe. Wool should have enough give to allow for that by putting a teeny bit extra taper in all the other pleats. Of course, I may be all wrong, but for the yellow that looks like the onliest way.

[James MacMillan]

Wow - I've never seen that tartan in a kilt.....

Really nice work!

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Barb,

Thanks for this post -- it helped me to visualize what you and I were discussing earlier.

Oh, and regarding the comment that most tartans are not designed by kiltmakers -- this tartan was designed by Bob Martin, who had a professional kiltmaking career of some 30 years! Go fig!

Thought I might suggest that this issue may simply be due to the scale that the woolen mill (in this case Dalgleish) produced the tartan on. If the tartan were woven on a larger or smaller scale, this might not be as much of an issue.

Great work on the kilt, can't wait to see it!
Aye,
Matt

[Barb T]

It looks like she tapered on th eoutside only for the triple yellow stripe. Wool should have enough give to allow for that by putting a teeny bit extra taper in all the other pleats. Of course, I may be all wrong, but for the yellow that looks like the onliest way.

Not entirely sure what Phil meant by his original question, but let me take a stab at it. As Turpin says, wool is very "shapable". If you're making a pleat with a central stripe, color boundary, or a solid color, both sides of the pleat are tapered, and both edges cross the straight grain of the fabric at a shallow angle. If you're making a pleat that has a stripe along one edge (such as the narrow center yellow stripe in the pics on page 1), then that edge is parallel to the straight grain and all of the taper is taken up along the other edge, which will lie at an angle to the straight grain of the fabric. It all gets flattened out in the pressing.

In general, you'd choose to put a stripe (or set of stripes) along one edge rather than in the center of a pleat so that you can put all the taper on the other side of the pleat in the adjacent color block so that you don't lose stripes as the pleat tapers.

Phil - does that answer your question?

B

[Barb T]

Thought I might suggest that this issue may simply be due to the scale that the woolen mill (in this case Dalgleish) produced the tartan on. If the tartan were woven on a larger or smaller scale, this might not be as much of an issue.

Great work on the kilt, can't wait to see it!
Aye,
Matt

I think Dalgliesh did the best they could with the sett. The narrow yellow stripe is the smallest element in the tartan, and it's 4 threads. The only choice they would have had would have been to make that element 2 threads (can't have an odd number of threads in a stripe), and that would have made the sett only about 3 1/2". So.....just a challenging one to pleat.

I just have to put on the lining, and I can send it out! Should go out some time tomorrow.

Cheers,

Barb

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Lochcarron is the only other woolen mill I know that stocks this tartan, and they only do it in the light weight 10 oz. Perhaps this is why! I'll have to satisfy my curiosity and measure the deminsions of this part of the tartan in that lighter weight and see how it compares.

[Barb T]

The narrow yellow stripe is the smallest element in the tartan, and it's 4 threads.

Oops - I didn't have my glasses on when I counted. It's 6 threads. But, you get my meaning. The sett would have been unacceptably small if they'd been able to reduce it by 1/3, and increasing it by 1/3 would have been a pretty big sett. I think they were pretty much constrained by the way the tartan was designed.

B

[Barb T]

Lochcarron is the only other woolen mill I know that stocks this tartan, and they only do it in the light weight 10 oz. Perhaps this is why! I'll have to satisfy my curiosity and measure the deminsions of this part of the tartan in that lighter weight and see how it compares.

Interesting!! Let me know what you find out!

Barb

[pdcorlis]

Phil - does that answer your question?

B

Why yes Barb - yes it does. Thanks so much!