Front apron left pleat not laying flat

[Steve Ashton]

Yes, steaming the apron edge will help in the short term, but if your apron edges are kicking outward it is usually due to a combination of things in the construction.

One - is that the apron may have not enough tapered shape to it or the apron edge crease may have been incorrectly pressed or lost over time. The reason an apron is tapered, to be wider at the hips than at the waist, is to allow the apron edges to gently wrap around the legs and not kick out.

One way to check - is to steam the apron with the kilt on, and see if the apron edge falls straight down the side of your leg with the width of the first pleat the same from the hips, down to the Selvedge.



Another way to check the apron taper is to lay the kilt on a table, raise the Fell Area so the pleats lay flat and parallel and see if the width of the first pleat is the same, all the way down.
If the width is wider at the bottom than it is at the hips, the apron taper may be the problem Perhaps the apron is shaped or sewn incorrectly.



The next possible cause may be the shape and depth of the deep or reverse pleat.
Just under the apron should be a pleat that is slightly deeper than the back pleats. This deep pleat on the left and reverse pleat on the right are there to allow enough room for the apron taper to take its curve.

You can identify the deep and reverse pleats by the small turned up portion forming a small hem.

If the deep/reverse pleat is not deep enough or was pressed and sewn incorrectly you will again see the pleat width wider at the bottom than at the hips.

This can sometimes be corrected by re-pressing the deep/reverse pleat inner crease. Sometimes the small hem must be re-shaped.

But I am sorry, but it will usually take an experienced kiltmaker to identify the underlying cause of the apron kick out and a experienced eye to fix it.

This is actually a very common problem. We see apron edge kick out all the time. It takes an experienced kiltmaker to shape and stitch the aprons so the edges do not kick out and many lower priced kilts, off-the-rack kilts, or home-made kilts, will usually suffer from apron kick out.
If you got the kilt new from a maker with apron kick, it will usually require a different eye of a different maker maker to fix it.