Hi all,

On a number of occasions, people have asked about pinning pleats before stitching. In my book, the instructions are to use only one pin (at the waist), and to stitch without any other pins in the pleat. This is the way that Elsie was taught, and it's the way that she taught me, and those instructions were non-negotiable when I wrote the book.

BUT!!! I have confessed to many people that I pin every pleat before I stitch. I discovered very early on that I make better pleats that way, and I take out fewer of them. This "confession" seems to have been really important to people and has let them do better kilts without feeling guilty about pinning, so I'm making a full post on the issue here.

Personally, I think the business of whether pleats are pinned or not is a complete red herring. Someone who pins a pleat before stitching is adding maybe 3 or 4 extra pins before starting to stitch. Remember that the finicky part is getting the waist and hip right to begin with, so adding 3-4 pins takes takes about 30 seconds (I timed it this morning). If your kilt has 30 pleats and you're a slow pinner, that adds _at best_ 30 minutes to your kiltmaking.

And I understand the argument that, for someone who does nothing but kiltmaking and for whom a half hour is really critical, not adding extra pins makes sense - you could make 41 kilts in the time that it took the "pinner" to make 40 kilts.

But that's definitely not most of the people on this forum. What's really important is the quality of the work. If someone can better meet high standards and is willing to spend the extra half hour (out of a total of 20-30 hours) to add a few pins, what is the big deal?? I hope we stop all this chest-pounding about "the one right way".