Tartan Design Questions

[KyleAisteach]

What the sett size determines is how deep your pleats need to be (and, relatedly, how many pleats there can be). The reason for this is when pleating, you're either going to fold one complete sett into the pleat (if doing military pleating) or just slightly more than one complete sett (if pleating to the sett). So if your sett is 6", each pleat eats up 6-7" inches of fabric. Ergo, a 7-yard kilt in a tartan with a 6" sett will have more and shallower pleats than a 7-yard kilt in a tartan with a 9" sett.

I designed my tartan for a 6" sett, but I produced it in a lighter fabric and it ended up being a 4.5" sett. I found that to be a good size, personally. It left me with slightly shallow pleats, but the result is that the kilts look like they're higher-yardage than they really are (unless you know enough about kiltmaking to notice that the pleats on are the shallow end of the spectrum).

I tend to think that if your design is in the 6.5-7" sett range, you're in the right ballpark, but some people adore the look of large setts, even if it results in a kilt that only has 10 pleats.