Quote from The Art Of Kiltmaking by Barbara Tewksbury & Elsie Stuehmeyer:

"'I had a kilt made, and they put 7 1/2 yards of material into it, and it's still too small. I wish they'd put 8 yards into my kilt.' The problem lies not in the amount of cloth but in the overall size of the kilt. If the size at the waistband is too short, cramming another 6 yards into the pleats isn't going to make the kilt fit better, anymore than adding fabric to a gathered skirt will make the skirt fit if the waistband is too tight."

"'I want an 8 yard kilt, because I've heard that the more cloth in a kilt, the better it looks.' [You] may not be able to put 8 yards of cloth into your kilt. If the person is small, there may simply not be enough room across the back to fit in all the pleats that you could possibly make with an 8 yard piece of kilt fabric."

"Regardless of whether a kilt is pleated to the sett or to the stripe, the depth of the pleats is governed by the size of the sett. The only way to make someone a kilt with deeper pleats is to have the person choose a different tartan with a larger sett, or choose a heavier weight of the same tartan, which will have a larger sett and therefore deeper pleats."

In summary, if a kilt is made from tartan, the depth of the pleats is determined by the sett, not the yardage. Which means the trem "8-yard kilt" can sometimes be a misnomer.

I guess I have rambled on enough...

Larry