Confused about pleating to the sett

[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.