So you want to buy a kilt, but you aren't sure how to have it pleated.

Great. I know of three options.

One is to ask your kiltmaker to pin the fabric up a couple different ways and send you a picture. I have never done this. I would expect to be charged a fee for the service, but your kilt maker will be using the actual cloth from which your actual kilt is about to be made. Hopefully you will find something like this in your email box:

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...52/#post740696

Option two is to buy not just a swatch but some actual yardage. If you find a piece of doublewide in your tartan less than one meter long, it is likely to be priced like a swatch (under US$20). This you can drape out yourself, like here:

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...tml#post947958

Finally, option three is to use an old Windoze tool. Find a picture of the tartan you are interested in on the internet. Push the "Prt Scr" button up near your insert and F12 keys. This copies everything visible on your computer monitor right now into your windows clipboard.

Next open a fresh document in MSPaint and paste.

Next use the rectangle select tool and outline the tartan only image you want to use. Press the "crop" button to make everything else go away.

Make sure the the rectangle selection is still active around the piece of tartan you want to keep and press "copy".

Now close that MSPaint document, don't save the changes and open a new MSPaint document. Press paste.

You should now have just the tartan piece you are interested in, situated in the top left corner of the new MSPaint document.

Next use the rectangle select tool to outline the pleat reveal you want to see, and press "copy"

NB: Your MSPaint document should look like this:



Next open a new MSPaint document, press paste. Press paste again. Now you have two pleat reveals, but they are stacked on top of each other. Click on the "top" one and drag it over to the right.

Push paste again. Now you have three, two side by side and the third stacked on top of the first one. Grab the one on the left and drag it over to the right. Repeat as needed. You should end up with this:



Or this, different tartan than the other images:



And so on.