Making a 4-yard, Box Pleat in the California Tartan:an ongoing thread

**Alan H** · 3rd February 07, 03:50 PM

four more hours today...just finished up. The kilt is done except for sporran loops and the two buckles.

Put in the strips to fringe on the right hand edge of the over-apron

Improvised a new way to stitch the right hand edge/fringe edge of the overapron to maximize used of every millimter of material! Elsie Struhmeyer would not approve but I was between a rock and a hard place and had tomake every bit count.

Fringed the edge, finished off the right hand edge of the over-apron

Made the liner panels and put in them in.

Madee the waistband, installed it...finished the ends of the waistband.

urned up the selvedged edge inside the deep pleat and stitched down.

then a bit more ironing..I looked at it in the mirror...Not bad at all! For those that know the Sportkilt version of this tartan, this 16 oz wool is much, much darker.

TOTA: 12.75 hours, OK, maybe 13 or 13.5

**Alan H** · 4th February 07, 09:14 PM

DONE... sporran loops on, two buckles/straps on. ... 1.5 more hours.

TOTAL for completed kilt, somewhere between 14-15 hours.

I'll try to get pics, soon! If nothing else, I'll wear it to our get-together with mkmound on Friday and folks can see it.

**Alan H** · 5th February 07, 09:35 AM

Originally Posted by Alan H

DONE... sporran loops on, two buckles/straps on. ... 1.5 more hours.

TOTAL for completed kilt, somewhere between 14-15 hours.

I'll try to get pics, soon! If nothing else, I'll wear it to our get-together with mkmound on Friday and folks can see it.

Remember that I machine-sewed these box pleats, though I did a lot of little finish work on the pleats by hand..

If I'd hand-sewed 25-29 knife pleats it would have taken me about 6-7 hours to do it. That would have put my total up to about 20-22 hours, which is starting toget down to where the pro's are doing it. However, Rocky and Kelly make 5-6 yard kife-pleated kilts in 8-12 hours.....MUCH faster than I am.

**Tartan Hiker** · 11th February 07, 09:33 PM

OK, Alan. After seeing the photos of your fabulous California Box-Pleat (I really like the way you centered the stripe inside the pleat!) I've taken up your challenge and ordered 2 yards of PV from Celtic Croft. Thompson Camel should make a splendid hiking kilt.

I'm sure you're right in that making several X-Kilts is a good warm-up for this project, and your step-by-step posts in this thread are great. The only thing I'm a bit shaky on is this part:

(quote) "Anyway, I un-pinned and tapered and re-pinned in two of the pleats, then hand sewed the edges together. They didn't look very good so I ripped 'em out, and pinned them again. Then I got an idea and tried basting the edges together with white thread. That looked good so I dug out the sewing machine and sewed the edges together from the inside. The result... a PERFECT taper and totally invisible stitching . YES! so I did the rest of them this way. (end quote)

Could you be a bit more specific on this so I'm sure I visualize this stitching correctly?

Thanks a bunch!

I remain, your humble and appreciative fan,
Bill