Kilt Pleats

[TheOfficialBren]

With that amount of fabric I say either go with box pleats or Kingussie pleats.

[David Thorpe]

With that amount of fabric I say either go with box pleats or Kingussie pleats.

Kingussie pleating takes the same amount of fabric as knife pleating. It is knife pleating. Only the direction of half the pleats is different.

[Spartan Tartan]

two words: BOX PLEAT.

[KiltFitz]

Oy! With only that amount of tartan length, scratch the MBP from the possibilities list.

In which case, I'd definitely go with a standard box pleat like Matt showed above.

***

[MacMillans son]

two words: BOX PLEAT.

Or two others...PILLOW SHAMS

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Kingussie pleating takes the same amount of fabric as knife pleating. It is knife pleating. Only the direction of half the pleats is different.

One could just as well say box pleating takes the same amount of fabric as knife pleating, for as I have stated before, the style of the pleat has little bearing at all on the amount of cloth used. One could have a low or high yardage box pleated kilt, and one could have a low or high yardage knife pleated kilt.

But with a Kingussie pleated kilt, I actually prefer to make these from 4 or 5 yards of cloth, but no more. The reason for this has to do with the lay of the pleats. From the outside of the kilt, the knife pleats on either side appear to be fanning out from each other. This means on the inside of the kilt, those pleats are running towards each other. And if you think about the depth of those nice, deep, pleats one gets with a high yardage kilt, and think about what happens when those pleats start to overlap towards the center of the kilt, you quickly run into trouble. You have pleats running into other pleats and there is simply nowhere for them to go.

There is a reason why historic Knigussie pleated kilts (both of them we know of so far!) were made with around 4 yards of cloth.

I know that Lady Chrystel makes them from higher yardage amounts, and I honestly do not know what wizardry she employs to make it possible. But in general, I won't make them out of more than 5 yards because such is beyond my ken.

[Paul Henry]

...snip...
I know that Lady Chrystel makes them from higher yardage amounts, and I honestly do not know what wizardry she employs to make it possible. But in general, I won't make them out of more than 5 yards because such is beyond my ken.

It's not only Chrystel who makes them! I made a Kinguissie ( or my version of it!) for myself out of about 7.5 yards of 16oz with 27 pleats and yes it was a little bulkier to handle during sewing, but didn't really pose any problems in construction and while I think that I still prefer a more traditional knife pleated kilt, it wear well and swings and swish evenly on both sides.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Paul,

It looks to me from your photo that your kilt is made in what some call on here the "reverse Kingussie" style, where the knife pleats actually point toward the center of the rear of the kilt, rather than away from it. In that case you would not run into the same issue as I described.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Ok, here are some photos from Lady Chrystel's web site showing some higher yardage Kingussie kilts she has made.




You will notice that none are pleated to stripe. I would dare say that's how she manages to do it. Pleating to the sett allows some more "wiggle room" in how the pleats are laid out.

Here's a "bottom up" photo showing what the center pleats look like.


You'll see that the pleats forming the center box pleat are very shallow, unlike the other pleats in the kilt. If this kilt were pleated to stripe, this would be impossible to do.

[Barb T]

If this kilt were pleated to stripe, this would be impossible to do.

But wouldn't it depend on what stripe you actually put into the pleats in comparison to what stripe you put into the "tail" pleat?? The critical thing is not having stacking under the tail pleat. For instance, in the kilt second from the bottom above, you could continue to pick up the pleat with the black block on both sides of the tail pleat, instead of pleating to the sett, and the kilt would be pleated to the stripe. Ditto the one above it - you could pleat all the pleats except the tail pleat to the one with the white stripe. And because you go over _more_ than one full sett between pleats when you pleat to the sett, pleating to the stripe would actually reduce the chance of pile-up.

Or am I missing something here??