Confused about pleating to the sett

[Mainelydad]

I'm having difficulty figuring out the number of pleats that I'll need. I'm attaching a photo of my tartan which has a sett of 5". I've placed pins to show where the pleat sections will fall. Each pleat ends up being 1".

So here's where I get confused. If I'm pleating to the sett, am I correct in thinking that the tartan should be accurately reproduced at the level of the fell? In my case each pleat would be 1" wide at the fell. I've split my hip measurement of 43" ( 21" - apron, 22" pleats) So am I correct in thinking that I can only have 22 pleats? That seems logical to me. The size of the sett and the width of each element dictates how many pleats I can have.

[The Wizard of BC]

Perhaps this tutorial I did a while ago will help.

"How an Engineer Lays out Pleats".

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/s...er+Lays+pleats

[Jock Scot]

Great tartan! I am no kilt maker and whilst you do need enough pleats to give the right effect----the "swish and swing"------it does depend on the waist size and size of the sett . I don't think there is necessarily a "correct" number of pleats required, but certainly enough are required. No doubt a kilt maker will give better advice than I. Good luck.

[The Wizard of BC]

Sorry Jock, As you say, you are not a kilt maker. The pleating of a kilt is determined by hip circumference not by waist size.

The hips are the largest part of the kilt so we use it to determine size of the pleats given the amount of fabric we have to work with.
Where the waist size comes into the equation is when tapering the individual pleats. We don't want to lose an element of the Tartan or create spear points where an element tapers to nothing.

[Jock Scot]

Yes of course. I stand corrected, thank you.

[plaid preacher]

LOL....okay, I'm not kiltmaker either, but I am making a kilt. I can hear Barb's voice in my head saying that pleats over 3/4 of an inch aren't quite as pleasing to the eye. That being said, you have indeed laid out one possible pleating pattern that would replicate the sett of your tartan, there is no doubt about that. Well done! There is some "jazz" to pleating the sett, I do believe. IT will never exactly replicate the sett because you are governed by the transitions in the tartan not but the thread count (I hope I am making sense).

So here are the questions you need to wrestle with:
a) Do you wish to keep the exact measurement of the sett (5") and therefore have pleats that are just a little bigger;
b) Do you want to keep the same layout but reduce the width of the pleats to 3/4 which would mean you would need another 7.33 pleats (rough math) TAoK has a method to calculate them out evenly;
c) do you want to split the yellow block into two pleats, which would allow you to keep closer to the original widths of the sett.

I'm sure someone smarter will come along to give guidance. I think using your layout but adding pleats so that they would be narrower would be the preferred option. Don't forget no one will see the apron and the pleats at the same time to be able to notice any difference.

[Mainelydad]

LOL....okay, I'm not kiltmaker either, but I am making a kilt. I can hear Barb's voice in my head saying that pleats over 3/4 of an inch aren't quite as pleasing to the eye. That being said, you have indeed laid out one possible pleating pattern that would replicate the sett of your tartan, there is no doubt about that. Well done! There is some "jazz" to pleating the sett, I do believe. IT will never exactly replicate the sett because you are governed by the transitions in the tartan not but the thread count (I hope I am making sense).

So here are the questions you need to wrestle with:
a) Do you wish to keep the exact measurement of the sett (5") and therefore have pleats that are just a little bigger;
b) Do you want to keep the same layout but reduce the width of the pleats to 3/4 which would mean you would need another 7.33 pleats (rough math) TAoK has a method to calculate them out evenly;
c) do you want to split the yellow block into two pleats, which would allow you to keep closer to the original widths of the sett.

I'm sure someone smarter will come along to give guidance. I think using your layout but adding pleats so that they would be narrower would be the preferred option. Don't forget no one will see the apron and the pleats at the same time to be able to notice any difference.

Thanks for your input. I'm new to all of this so I have questions galore. I get your point, but by narrowing the pleats I'm distorting the tartan, and what should be squares become rectangles. Is that OK? My gut says no. I thought the goal was to accurately reproduce the tartan through the pleats. I might be making a mountain out of a molehill.

[The Wizard of BC]

With a Tartan like Loud MacLeod you can have pleats of almost any width you desire and still duplicate the original Sett. You just make the individual pleats narrower and have more of them in each Sett.

Try the diverging lines trick and see how many different combinations you can find and still retain the full Sett.

I have seen Loud MacLeod pleated as narrow as 1/2" and 3/4" is quite common.

The only thing you need to keep an eye out for is any Tartan element which may disappear or create a 'spear point' as the pleats taper.

[Mainelydad]

With a Tartan like Loud MacLeod you can have pleats of almost any width you desire and still duplicate the original Sett. You just make the individual pleats narrower and have more of them in each Sett.

Try the diverging lines trick and see how many different combinations you can find and still retain the full Sett.

I have seen Loud MacLeod pleated as narrow as 1/2" and 3/4" is quite common.

The only thing you need to keep an eye out for is any Tartan element which may disappear or create a 'spear point' as the pleats taper.

OK. I will give that a try tomorrow.

[Barb T]

Yes, in pleating to the sett, the back of the kilt must look like the sett. But notice that I didn't say "exactly reproduces the sett". I can't remember the last kilt I made that exactly reproduced the sett at the bottom of the fell. Because of the following other criteria, you can't just divide the sett up mathematically or arbitrarily choose a particular pleat width or pleat placement:

-A pivot _must_ either be centered in a pleat or be split down the middle between two pleats. The latter is only possible if the center stripe of the pivot is reasonably wide (unless you are really precise, you can't split a stripe smaller than about 3/8"). And a given pivot must be centered every time you get to it as you are laying out the pleats, which will happen several times across the back of a kilt.

-Pleats _must_ be mirror images on either side of a pivot. In other words, the pleat two over to the right from a given pivot must be _exactly_ the reverse of the pleat two over to the left of the pivot. So, if your pivots are, for example, 7" apart, you _can't_ just choose to make your pleats 3/4" across. If you center one pivot, and make all the pleats .75" across, the next pivot won't be centered, and the pleats won't be mirror images on opposite sides of the pivots.

-Pleats must look pleasing. A prominent element needs to be either centered or go straight up the edge of a pleat. If a pleat has any taper, a prominent element that isn't either centered or up the edge will look like the element goes diagonally up the pleat. Not good. So, my view is that you can't just put a pleat anywhere you want it.

-A prominent element in a pleat shouldn't be lost in the pleat taper toward the waist.

-You are constrained by the amount of tartan that you have. Even if pleats a certain size would "work better" in reproducing the sett, it could easily mean that you either don't have enough tartan or you can't get all the tartan you have into the kilt.

So, bottom line, it's a rare tartan where all the prominent elements are exactly the same distance apart. So, you have to work at balancing pleat placement with pleat size to get the best looking pleating. And fundamentally, that means that you won't exactly reproduce the sett. Honestly? This isn't noticeable unless you do something really wonky like double the width of a prominent element.

I'll dig up some pics to illustrate all of this and add them at some point today.