Kilt Problem

[The Wizard of BC]

You may not have caught the hints that tpa and Barb T are giving you in posts 8 & 9 but there may be another problem other than straps.

Anytime you fold something on an angle a small corner will hang down behind. We see this at the Deep Pleat just behind the left, outer apron edge and at the Reverse Pleat just behind the right, under apron edge.



Many of the less expensive kilts have these small apron tips hanging down.

Sewing a tiny hem up into the kilt to fold these apron tips up and away is one of those things common to traditional kilts.

Barb T has a really good tutorial on these little bits of hem.

You can find it in the Professional Kiltmaker hints and tips section of the forum or by clicking here.


Before you go much further with pulling and yanking your straps, check to insure that these apron tips hanging down are not your problem.

You should also check to insure that there is a small turn up on the left edge of the under apron or that the under apron left edge is slightly shorter than the same edge on the outer apron.
If the under apron is longer than the outer apron there is your problem and no amount of tightening of the straps will fix it.

[Taskr]

I read the OP as having the entire front edge hanging lower, which I did find cinching properly took care of. I get your point on the skirt edges, and do have those hem turn-ups.

[Steve Ashton]

Then we just need to find if the kilt of the OP has them as he is the one with the problem and this is his thread.

[tpa]

Yup to TPA - this is how a kilt should be made. You can do this yourself, but open up the facing stitching and fold the bottom up first on the diagonal. Hem it, then refold and stitch the facing. Will be less bulky that way.

Thank you Barb, yes I found I had to do that otherwise the bulk would have been too obvious and probably felt uncomfortable. I also found that the original corner on one appeared to have been glued up which made unpicking it neatly impossible so it had to be turned up to cover up the resulting hole, which was ok as that was the intention anyway. In the end with one, I left the facing undone as the cheaper kilts often seem to skimp on the front and under apron lengths and I prefer the under apron to wrap someway round my left leg.

[Barb T]

Then we just need to find if the kilt of the OP has them as he is the one with the problem and this is his thread.

Urr - true. Sorry. The other thing that can happen involves how the fabric was originally woven. Kilts are typically made from double width fabric, which means that half the kilt comes from one half of the fabric and the other half from the part on the other side of the fold. Tartan _should_ be woven so that the sett width-wise is the same on both halves, but it commonly is not. I've been faced with tartan woven in such a way that the two halves are off by over 1/2" when you try to line them up at the join. It's very common to have the tartan off by 1/4". So, that means that, if you make the apron out of one half and the underapron out of the other, and you have the same tartan stripe top and bottom (which you have to have), one is going to be longer than the other even though they show exactly the same section of the tartan.

So, when I make a kilt, I check carefully and make sure that I've laid out the apron on the half that is wider. If the kiltmaker didn't checked, and the underapron half were made out of the wider piece, you could line them up at the top, and the underapron would stick out the bottom. The only solution is to pull the underapron up and have them mismatched at the top edge.

[Taskr]

True. Defining the problem is important to providing solutions.
Great to be learning about quality made kilts.

[dawgbyte]

Thanks so much for this information. I will keep working with my kilt and see if I can't resolve the problem.

You may not have caught the hints that tpa and Barb T are giving you in posts 8 & 9 but there may be another problem other than straps.

Anytime you fold something on an angle a small corner will hang down behind. We see this at the Deep Pleat just behind the left, outer apron edge and at the Reverse Pleat just behind the right, under apron edge.



Many of the less expensive kilts have these small apron tips hanging down.

Sewing a tiny hem up into the kilt to fold these apron tips up and away is one of those things common to traditional kilts.

Barb T has a really good tutorial on these little bits of hem.

You can find it in the Professional Kiltmaker hints and tips section of the forum or by clicking here.


Before you go much further with pulling and yanking your straps, check to insure that these apron tips hanging down are not your problem.

You should also check to insure that there is a small turn up on the left edge of the under apron or that the under apron left edge is slightly shorter than the same edge on the outer apron.
If the under apron is longer than the outer apron there is your problem and no amount of tightening of the straps will fix it.

[tpa]

You can find it in the Professional Kiltmaker hints and tips section of the forum or by clicking here.

Steve, a couple of images have disappeared from thread 8 in the above post.