First Trad Kilt: an ongoing thread

[Alan H]

I've been sick, and I took the opportunity provided by a fever and a cough and a runny nose to stay home from work. In the afternoons when I was feeling a bit more chipper, I started working on my first traditional kilt. This is my "practice" kilt, the one I'm doing before I bite off the X Marks kilt.

What I'll do in this thread is post a series of updates, with information and pics when I get around to taking them on how it's going. Hopefully this will be of som e use to other fledgling kiltmakers.

First off....I'm planning on making two more kilts, which including the canvas kilt, means I'd have made three when I "retire". The absolute most I'd ever make I think is six.

1. carhardt canvas machine-sewn (done)
2. "practice" wool traditional kilt (in progress)
3. X Marks wool 6-yard kilt (definitely will make this)

The other possibilities are:

4. cotton/poly "contemporary" kilt...since I'm not entirely happy with the canvas one I made
5. 7 yard tradtional in the Holyrood tartan, because I really love that tartan
6. 7 yard traditional in the California Tartan, if I could ever find a source of the California Tartan that's not obscenely expensive

Oh, heck, one more
7. 7 yard traditional in Grey Stewart, because I love the tartan.

OK, check in whenever you like, I'll update this thread periodically as I make progress through kilt #2.

[Alan H]

First up, the material...

I bought 5 yards of this off of ebay...

http://i1.ebayimg.com/03/i/05/03/26/07_1.JPG

DO NOT BUY THIS STUFF for your first kilt. The material itself is really quite nice, but..

1. The sett repeats every TWO repetitions of what seems to be the pattern. Problem is, what's "not the same" is the two strongest lines in the pattern, so you're stuck. A pro could work around it, maybe. I'm going to have to pleat to the stripe to one of the minor stripes in the tartan.

2. The pattern is not woven evenly across the width of the cloth. When I split the cloth, the spacing of the stripes on the left hand edge of the cloth is about 3/4 an inch off from the right hand. This is a major PIA when you join the cloth to make 7 yards.

3. There' s no kilting selvedge, I'm going to have to hem this puppy

4. The thin black line which I'm using to pleat to the stripe doesn't actually define a square. It's 6 inches along the height of the tartan, but 6.5 inches along it's length.

Pick another tartan!!!! I thought I could make a 6 yarder, but to get the number of pleats, it's going to be a 7 yard.

[MacConnachie]

Aha, Alan! So you bought that bit of tartan yardage! I was interested in it at first glance because of its resemblance to the Red Robertson, but of course, on closer inspection, it's not. I was looking at it for great kilt material, and appreciate knowing of the "inconsistencies" in the pattern of the sett. Didn't mean to step on your thread, here, and hope that my comments are a reasonable contribution.

What method did you use to split the cloth?

[Alan H]

Aha, Alan! So you bought that bit of tartan yardage! I was interested in it at first glance because of its resemblance to the Red Robertson, but of course, on closer inspection, it's not. I was looking at it for great kilt material, and appreciate knowing of the "inconsistencies" in the pattern of the sett. Didn't mean to step on your thread, here, and hope that my comments are a reasonable contribution.

What method did you use to split the cloth?

You're not stepping on the thread at all, thats' exactly what this is here, for!

I bought the initial offering on ebay of 5 yards. I see another offering of 6 yards, so the seller obviously has whole bolt of it. The material itself is a nice wool twill. When it's done I'm going to really enjoy this kilt, but this stuff is a stinker to work with for a first-timer.

I'll say this, four or five yards of this stuff would make a **Great** absolutely fantastic Great Kilt for a good price.

OK, how'd I split it? Hang with me and I'll get to that.

[Alan H]

OK, I bought Barb's book. I"ve read through most of it, now. Some parts I've read twice, or even three times. I'm not going to count that in the running total I spent in making the kilt.

KILT PLANNING: 3 hours

I spent about a half hour closely inspecting the fabric. That's when I realized that the sett repeated every TWO "sort-of-setts". I was pretty upset, as I wanted to pleat to the sett, but there's just no way with this tartan. I measured the black line that defines the "sort-of-sett" size, and that I could use to pleat to the stripe, and I got 6 inches.

What I didn't realize, and didn't find out until the next day was that this line doesn't define a square. This line defines a box that's 6 inches along the width of the tartan and 6.5 inches along the length. So I did all the calculations assuming a 6-inch sett. ARRRRGH. When I got it on the floorr....well, we'll get to that.

I re-measured myself to make SURE I knew what the measurements were. Well, DANG, I seem to have grown in the past four months, because my waist measured at 41 (not 40) and my butt at 46 (not 44). Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Good thing I Measured.

OK, I did the apron/pleats, waist/hips splits that Barb guides you through. My Waist splits are 21 apron/20 pleats....My Hip splits are 22 apron/24 pleats

OK I wanted a kilt with around 20-25 pleats in it. I did all the calculations assuming a 6 inch sett and came up with a value around 6 yards to make myself a nice kilt with 22 pleats. I worked it all out for a 5 yard, a 6 yard a 6.66 yard and a 7 yard kilt and settled on the 6 yard.

All of the above took me about 3 hours.

[Alan H]

CUTTING OUT THE FABRIC AND JOINING THE SECTIONS: 5 hours

OK, so I laid the material out on the floor. Actually I swept and dusted my hardwood floor before I laid it out.Anyway, I read and RE-read Barbs section on how to figure out what to cut.

Length is 24 inches
Rise is two inches
Hem Allowance is 1 inch.......total is 27 inches.

So I Triple-checked to make sure I was cutting from the edge that had the twill lines running the right way, and lo and behonld, there was a nice strong line in the weave exactly at 27 inches. So I forged ahead and cut the material.

I didn't rip it, I cut it. OK, OK...Call me a coward. I CUT it. But hey, I had a nice straight line to follow, and a good pair of sharp scissors.

Now comes the NASTY surprise. I took the "other" side of the fabric and aligned it so that the twill lines were running the right way. I then tried to match the edges of the fabric so that the correct selvedge (such as it is) continues as a continuous line. AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!! The pattern doesn't match up! It LOOKED like it was symmetrical all the way across the cloth when I looked at the whole thing, but it's NOT. If I lined up the crummy-selvedge edge, the first stripe in the tartan is fine, the next one is a sixteenth of an inch off, the next one is almost two sixteenths off and so on. 27 inches later, the last, big stripe is almost 3/4 of an inch offset!!!!

OK, allot fifteen minutes to stomping around, cursing and scaring the wife.

Then, since I had the tape measure out, I *HAPPENED* to measure the black lines that I was going to pleat to and discovered the 6-inch/6.5-inch anomaly.

MORE stomping around and cursing. Much cursing. OK, back to planning stage.

This time I just said, Forget it!!!.....I want a kilt with 24, 1-inch wide pleats around me ****. How much material will that take with my *surprise* 6.5 inch sett? Answer? 7 yards.

So I figured out....remember that the "setts" aren't the same, the pattern repeats every TWO "setts"......where I could overlap the pieces. Then I started counting setts.

1 yard for the over apron and first deep pleat.
1 yard for the under apron and reverse pleat.

Beyond that I need 24 "setts", so that I have 24 stripes to pleat to. Oh, and I didn't forget the one I'm going to lose in wastage when I join the two pieces. I'd better add in 3 more "setts"-worth of cloth *just in case*. I'll be steaming mad if I run out of cloth when I have nearly 3 yards left over, but can't use it. All right then. So that's where I cut. And cut I did. I COMMITTED.

Then I trimmed the second length of cloth to 27 inches in width.

Now, how to best join the two pieces?

All right, I confess. I used a sewing machine. I had to pin it three times because I could NOT figure out how to line it up properly. I spent about 20 minutes figuring out where best to join the piece so that any seams would be hidden deep within a pleat and the pattern of the sett matched perfectly. I had to pull/stretch one piece a little bit to get the pattern to align, of course. Once I had it as good as I could stand to make it, I picked a thread that matched as best as I could, and ran a line of loose stitching along the pieces to hold them together. And then I did another line of stitching.

Well, I blew it. I accidentally stitched the loose excess material down to the back of the main cloth with the second line of stitching. So I had to **very carefully** rip out 27 inches of tight machine-stitching. And then, so as to not mess it up again, I hand, blind-stitched the edge of the upper layer down to the lower layer. I must say that it's essentially invisible. I did a good job. This is exactly the technique I'll use for sewing down the fell of the pleats.

I then fired up my lady's sewing machine again and serged the raw edges inside the kilt and trimmed off the excess. The match is nowhere near perfect, but I think I can account for it when I make the pleats, and it will look fine unless someone opens up that particular pleat and looks closely, inside.

This was a lot of work, and I've never hand-sewed a 27-inch seam before. That hand-sewing took me about 40 minutes.

If 27 inches takes me 40 minutes, then each 8-inch long pleat should take me roughly 1/3 of 40 minutes, or 13 minutes to stitch up. Let's be generous and call it 15 minutes.

15 minutes times 24 pleats equals 360 minutes, or it's going to take me SIX HOURS to hand-sew up pleats.

Oyyyyyy, what have I signed on for, here?

TOTAL TIME SO FAR: 8 hours

[Andrew Breecher]

Alan, I just want to say this is an excellent post. Despite all your minor setbacks, you're still forging ahead full-steam, and don't worry - any setback you snag is just what anyone else would hit too. It's good for other new "tailors" to see - perhaps they'll overcome their mistakes with equal aplomb.

Andrew.

[Alan H]

Alan, I just want to say this is an excellent post. Despite all your minor setbacks, you're still forging ahead full-steam, and don't worry - any setback you snag is just what anyone else would hit too. It's good for other new "tailors" to see - perhaps they'll overcome their mistakes with equal aplomb.

Andrew.

Thanks, Andrew. This is why I'm writing it. The idea is to give us "amateur" kiltmakers some insights into what another total hack (me) went through to make a traditional kilt. This will be a realistic, blow-by-blow accounting of every step every success, failure, surprise, deviation, and so on in the process. It will hopefully culminate in a picture of Yours Truly in his first, all wool, 7 yard, traditional kilt.

BTW, I have already deviated from Barb's book by joining the pieces already. Barb has you join the pieces after you stitch up a mess of pleats. Ann Stewarts article in "Threads" says the same thing. I think I'm glad I tacked it now, and not later. What if I hadn't been able to make it work?

[GMan]

I'm really enjoying this blow by blow discussion, it does bring the art of kiltmaking to the forefront.

[Barb T]

Hi guys

Yeh, Alan's got a tough tartan. It's one of those that looks superficially like it has a reasonable sett (repeat), but, when you look at it closely, you really have to go 13" across the tartan to get a full repeat. With a sett that size, it's impossible to pleat to the sett and get 25 pleats. This doesn't happen with many tartans, but it's worth looking carefully to make sure you're not stuck with one. Pleating to the stripe is the only real solution, as Alan has discovered.

As far as the 6" weft-wise and 6.5" warp-wise, this is absolutely typical of tartan. Tartan _should_ be what weavers call a "45" weave (exactly the same # of threads/inch in the warp and the weft), but that isn't what happens. Blocks are never exactly square. And the repeat is longer warp-wise (along the length of a piece of yardage). I think it probably has to do with weft-wise draw-in during the weaving process.

The issue with one half of a double width having a slightly wider sett than the other is an inexcusable problem that I've seen only a couple times in all the tartan I've bought. And I have to say I've never had one that's 3/4" different. I've dealt with 1/4" and hidden it fine, but, if I had ordered that length of tartan from a mill and discovered a 3/4" difference, I would have sent it back as unacceptable. That may be why the tartan is on e-bay to begin with.

The instructions in my book tell you to make the join after stitching the first half of the pleats, because it _is_ possible to join the fabric in a place that will show because it will wind up on the outside, rather than the inside, of a pleat, and it's easier to avoid making that mistake if you do all the pleats up to the join before you actually do the join. It's easier for a beginner to predict what will be inside a pleat and what won't if you're pleating to the stripe, so Alan's probably OK. I do commonly join the tartan before I start pleating, but I have enough experience to know where the join will come out in a pleat. Even at that, I test pin what will be the very last pleat before I spend the time doing the join, just to make sure I don't screw it up.

Alan - best of luck, and keep us posted with the blow-by-blow!!

Barb