How an Engineer lays out pleats

[The Wizard of BC]

Now, before I get too far into this tutorial I need to explain a bit about how this system came about and why it is so different from that explained in "The Art of Kiltmaking".

When I first started making kilts I worked with solid colored fabrics. This allows me to make each pleat exactly the same size regardless of the fabric I was working with. So I picked 1inch wide pleats for my Dress Model and 1 1/2 inch wide pleats for my Cargo Model.

This is easy to lay out but does cause one difference from how a traditional kilt is made. If I use the same pleat width all the time, to make a bigger kilt I need more pleats, hence more fabric. For a smaller kilt I use fewer pleats and need less fabric. All told my kilts use more fabric that what is in a traditional kilt. This worked quite well for me as the fabrics I was using were about 13 oz but because there was more fabric felt like a 16 oz kilt.

Well I was so used to this idea of standard width pleats that when I started making Tartan kilts I kept the same thinking. To me Tartan was just fabric with lines already on it.
And my Engineer mind said to me that Tartan patterns, or Setts, were mathematical. So to me laying out pleats was a mathematical process.

In a Traditional kilt you start with a known amount of fabric. You figure out how much is used by the aprons and what is left over is what you have available for the pleats.
In a Traditional kilt you also vary the width of individual pleats to work around the Tartan pattern. You do not want a line or element of the Tartan to disappear as the kilt tapers from the hips to the pleats.

This manually adjusting each pleat just sits wrong with my Engineer's brain. It took me a very long time to get that concept. To me it just wasn't natural.

OK, let me give you an example of why I like this system and why I continue to use it.

No. 1 - If you are making more than one kilt from the same Tartan this is a quick and easy way of saving the layout and duplicating it for the next kilt.
No. 2 - If you are making more than one kilt from the same Tartan but they are in different sizes, if you use this system all the kilts will look exactly the same from the back. Each one will have the exact same pleat width and the Tartan will look exactly the same. (larger kilts will just have more pleats on each side, and smaller kilts will have fewer pleats on each side.)
No. 3 - If for some reason you are making two kilts from the same Tartan but different weights of fabric the back of each kilt will look exactly the same. Size of Sett makes no difference when using this system.
No. 4 - If you are pleating a kilt to the stripe you may think it is easy. Just follow the lines, right? But how wide does each pleat need to be to fit the wearers size.? Using this system solves that question in one motion. No measuring in fractions of an inch, in fact no tape measure required at all.
No. 5 - If you are pleating a kilt to the Sett this system makes laying out a breeze. Again, no measuring or tape measure required at all. And because you have a marked pattern that you follow you never make a mistake and drop a Tartan element causing you to rip out pleats to correct the mistake.
No 6 - Did I mention that with this system there is no measuring required? That's right, no tape measure hanging around your neck and no math with fractions of inches or conversions to metric required at all. It is all visual. Line up the pattern, make some lines and your ready to start stitching.