Pressing and/or basting pleats before stitching

[Barb T]

I'm going to offer the opposite perspective. As Steve says, I do not press or baste pleats ahead of time. There are two reasons for this, and they really don't have anything to do with how many kilts I've made or how fast I stitch. The first reason is precision - once you have folded and pressed tartan, it's almost impossible to press out a crease and fold it in a different place, especially if you want to fold it in a new place only a small distance from the bad crease. So, if you're off by, say 1/16" when you press where you think the pleat will have to be, it's awfully difficult to reposition the fold where it should be. That means the pleat won't be precise in size or positioning of elements or maybe both. And if you have 27 pleats in your kilt, and you're off by 1/16" in pleat size in each, the pleats would be off by over an inch and a half when you get done. I think it's much easier to achieve precise pleat size and element placing by carefully measuring and pinning each pleat as you stitch it. I wrote a post awhile back about pinning to achieve better pleats: http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...not-pin-72250/

The other reason is actually time. If you pin a pleat well before you stitch it, I don't think you don't save any time at all by taking the time to baste the pleat ahead of time or press everything ahead of time. And if you press and baste everything ahead of time you have a giant pile of fabric that is a lot harder to sew than stitching one pleat at a time and keeping all of the rest of the fabric out of the way.