At it, again...

[Alan H]

I'm knocking together a 6-yard, machine sewn kilt for my friend and throwing mentor, Mike Pockoski. The tartan is Holyrood. This will be his throwing kilt.

I'd forgotten that the Marton Mills PV doesn't have a finished selvedge, so I pondered the option of leaving the fringed edge like USA Kilts does, but decided to tuck up a little hem instead. This one is pleated to stripe, 23 of them. I'll fit it out with one buckle on each side, no velcro here.

When I offered to make Mike a kilt last winter, he spent a couple of weeks browsing the 'net. He decided that he liked Holyrood and a couple of other tartans, and then he discovered the Holyrood Gold Jubilee tartan. THAT was "the one". Well....that particular tartan was only woven in rather small amounts and it cost a MINT. So that got put off.

A couple of months later, this past summer, I was browsing ebay and found that there was a kiltmaker in Scotland offering Holyrood Golden Jubilee kilts for, like $290. This tartan is ONLY available in 16 ounce wool (I believe) so I messaged Mike right away. There was NO way I could match that price. Mike was in Scotland at the time, doing the Games circuit, and the kiltmaker was only about a mile from the house he was staying at. So he went down there and ordered the kilt. I assume that the guy got the tartan on a massive discount, it probably didn't sell very well, or something. The kilt arrived about two months ago and I must say...WOW. It looks great.

But there's no way he's going to wear that on the field! NO WAY! I made his wife Mindy make him promise not to. So Mike is getting a PV "regular" Holyrood 6-yarder to replace his utterly trashed Pakistani Royal Stewart, which is 4-5 inches too small on him, anyway. Merry Christmas, Mike. Mike and I are almost exactly the same size (so why don't I throw as far as he does, right? HA!) so maybe I can strap it on for some pics before I mail it off to N.C.

I'll grab some pics of the kilt in progress on my kitchen table, too, next time I lay it out and work on the pleat tapers.

[Eck]

Alan H
I know you intend to make your friends kilt yourself and all credit to you, I wish I had your skill but thought Mike might be interested in this one for sale if he likes the Holyrood Gold tartan - I saw it after reading your thread and it clicked.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MADE-ORDER...item5890a0a40a

Happy sewing
Eck

[Alan H]

Alan H
I know you intend to make your friends kilt yourself and all credit to you, I wish I had your skill but thought Mike might be interested in this one for sale if he likes the Holyrood Gold tartan - I saw it after reading your thread and it clicked.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MADE-ORDER...item5890a0a40a

Happy sewing
Eck

That is exactly the deal he jumped on this past summer...

[Alan H]

Mikes kilt, under construction...

[Alan H]

After pondering for a while and holding up thread, I've decided to do something new, that I've never done before. I'm sewing the upper part of the fell with a medium dark blue-gray, but the bottom part of the fell with a grayish-brown. This is top-stitching, as this will be a casual/throwing kilt so the stitching shows. However, if I'd used blue-gray all the way through and sewn the bottom of the fell to the waistband all one color, the stitching would have been seriously contrasted to the fabric in the brownish part of the fell. So....two passes through. I'm almost half-tempted to stitch the bottom part by hand, but we shall see.

I fine-tuned the pleat tapers this AM, and sewed down 1/3rd of the pleats... of the "top half".

[Alan H]

This morning I top-stitched the bottom half of 5 of the pleats. Then I took a good, hard look and decided to rip them out and hand-stitch them. I'm happy enough with the top half, and I want the strength of machine-sewing, but I can only tolerate so much stripe misalignment. The topmost white stripe is pretty badly zigzagged, but that will be under the belt, and almost under the waistband, so I'm not worried. The white stripe "next lower down" is much better, though not as good as if I'd hand sewn. I'm OK with it. I VERY carefully aligned the contrasting stripes that will be at the midpoint of the fell, so that's fine.

It's not a big deal to hand-sew "half" really more like 40% of 23 pleats, and it's worth it to me.

Putting them in and ripping them out took me about 90 minutes and I couldn't stand making NO progress, so I finished off the end of the under-apron and put in the hair canvas (actually interfacing) in the over-apron, while tacking down the reverse pleat.

[RockyR]

I'd forgotten that the Marton Mills PV doesn't have a finished selvedge, so I pondered the option of leaving the fringed edge like USA Kilts does, but decided to tuck up a little hem instead.

Small point of clarification... we no longer allow any kilts to go out with a frayed selvedge. They're either properly hemmed (blind hem so no stitches show) or have a tuck selvedge edge. No more fringed selvedges on finished kilts.

[Alan H]

Small point of clarification... we no longer allow any kilts to go out with a frayed selvedge. They're either properly hemmed (blind hem so no stitches show) or have a tuck selvedge edge. No more fringed selvedges on finished kilts.

This is a big change, and a good one, I think.

I have to admit that I wish that my sewing machine had a respectable blind stitch setting.

This particular kilt is primarily for throwing, and VERY secondarily for hitting the pub in, so I just tucked the "ragged" selvedge under about 3/8 of an inch and stitched it down. Nobody will care, on the field and nobody will even notice from more than 8 feet away.

I figure Mike will wear his lovely Scottish wool Golden Holyrood "8-yard" kilt for anything where he has to look respectable.

[Oddern]

The kilt looks nice Alan. From the pics it looks almost like you have stapled the pleats together?? Do you sew through all the layers of fabric? doesn't it make the fell a bit bulky?
I'm just curious because this method seems easier then what I'm used to do.

[Alan H]

The kilt looks nice Alan. From the pics it looks almost like you have stapled the pleats together?? Do you sew through all the layers of fabric? doesn't it make the fell a bit bulky?
I'm just curious because this method seems easier then what I'm used to do.

No staples. I have big pins that are made with a "T" shape bent into them. They're easier to deal with that regular pins, but bulky, so I use them to hold the kilt together while I'm figuring out the pleats. When it comes time to sew a pleat, the big T pins get pulled and replaced with "regular" pins.

Barbs book says to not use pins. Well, maybe Barb can hand hold a whole pleat but I can't. This goes double if I'm machine-sewing a pleat. It's VERY easy for the feed dogs on a machine to pull one side of the fabric faster than the other, and that results in misalignment of the stripes. Pins help hold everything in place.

You asked if I sewed through all the layers of fabric, and wouldn't that make the fell a bit bulky?

Answer is...yes I do, and yes it would, if I were using 7-9 yards of 13 or 16 ounce wool fabric. So in fact, when I make a kilt like that, I DON"T top-stitch it. I build those the traditional way, hand-sewing the pleats and then cutting out the excess material in the fell.

However, this is a 6-yard, polyester-viscose kilt, and that is *much* less bulky. Top-stitching a kilt like this generates very roughly about as much bulk as a 16 ounce kilt done the traditional way. To my mind, this is entirely acceptable.

I'm actually pretty keen on "6 yard kilts" in general. To my eyes, five-yard knife-pleat kilts just look a little bit skimpy unless the sett is pretty small, like 4.5 inches. VERY VERY generally, assuming about a 6-7-inch sett, a five yard kilt will have about 15-18 pleats. Add in another yard of fabric, all of which goes into pleats, and now you get very roughly 6 more pleats or 20-24. That looks a lot better to me, and it doesn't add that much more expense.

Seriously, for all-around "stuff", a 6-yard, polyester-viscose kilt is THE kilt to have until you get to the point where you're really dressing it up for formal gigs. It looks traditional enough to "fit the mold" and nobody but a real kilt hound will know the difference. Yet, it doesn't have the weight and expense of the 7-9 yard wool job. This is just my opinion, of course. for the Caledonian Society Spring Ball, and for meeting the Duchess and so on....get out the wool. But for knocking around town, or hitting the pub after the Games....

6-yard PV, all the way.

AND...if you happen to want to purchase a well-made 6-yard polyester-viscose kilt, I HIGHLY recommend the USA Kilts semi-traditional model.

Highly recommended.