To the stripe or set?

[Darrell The Barber]

I’m getting ready to make my first kilt I have the tartan on hand and I’m looking for ideas on pleating the XMarks tartan, I will be knife pleating it , I’m thinking on pleating to the yellow stripe
Cheers!

[figheadair]

It may depend on the tartan can you enlighten us?

[Darrell The Barber]

[QUOTE=figheadair;1389113]It may depend on the tartan can you enlighten us?[/QUOTE

I will be using the XMarks tartan ,I’m thinking to pleat to the yellow stripe however I’m looking for suggestions on what others have done.

[OC Richard]

I know various people have posted photos of their XMarks kilts over the years, have you tried the search feature?

I'm not sure how many runs of that fabric were done, but it's safe to say that after each run members might be posting photos of their new kilts.

I will say that for months now the "advanced" search feature has been disabled for me, I just get a popup warning/re-routing. That was a very handy feature. So for searching this site I've found Google to be better.

Googling turned up this thread, it's pleated to the yellow stripe as you suggested.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-stripe-34507/

Here you can see a demonstration of pleating options

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-please-49952/

Given those I would probably pleat to the white stripe.

I do think that in general pleating to the stripe is better because 1) it gives you two looks for the price of one, and 2) because in most things I prefer the concept of "form follows function". (Why try to make pleated fabric look like flat non-pleated fabric? Is trompe l'oeil really what Highland dress has ever been about?)

However I do recognise that the effect of some tartans is dependent on the balance of colours, and this is upset no matter what stripe is selected. So there are a few tartans that I think look best pleated to the sett.

[Tobus]

...I would probably pleat to the white stripe.

I believe that's what I would do as well if it were my kilt. I have kilts pleated to the sett, pleated to minor stripes, and pleated to bold stripes. My favourite look, by far, is pleated to the boldest or most prominent (widest) stripe in the sett. It fills the pleat width, gives them more visual uniformity, and makes them stand out distinctly from the tartan pattern, especially with a narrow pleat width. Admittedly, my preference for using the boldest stripe is based on the look of military kilts. I have come to really like that look over the years. The wide white stripe in the XMTS tartan would give the pleats a look somewhat similar to this:



Of course, it really comes down to personal preference and the "theme" you want your kilt to display.

[Jock Scot]

Interestingly most civilian kilts will usually be pleated to the sett unless a specific request to do otherwise is made to the traditional Scottish kilt maker. To be fair, I am not sure if modern kilt makers in Scotland still follow this trend, but when I asked one very traditional and successful kilt maker a couple of years ago about civilian pleating to the stripe the reply was, well ,errr, ummmm-------unprintable.

[Pleater]

Having been making kilts for a while now, I suggest making a few folds in various options and seeing how they look - I usually find that one option will proclaim itself the right one for the project. Just keep trying out various ploys until you find the one that works.

Early on in my career with kilts I had a three colour fabric which was a bit of a Goldilocks problem - a row of any of the bands looked wrong - I still pleated to the stripe, but the stripe of each colour in turn which kept the pleasant balance of colours and turned out to give an exactly right feeling pleat depth - so it was that one. This is one of the rejected foldings and the multicolour one which was selected.