Any one use metric in your kilt making ?

[Pleater]

I work in inches for the first dividing and sizing and putting in pins and the tacking of the large pleats (I make reverse Kingussie style kilts) which takes the fabric down to about my hip size. I check and press in the outer folds lightly using a cloth wrapped board to do each pleat separately.

Once there is definitely a kilt in front of me I tack the lower edge of the pleats, check the measurements in inches, check the lower edge of the fell and tack just below that and then I change to metric and a micrometer to start the narrowing into the waist. The first bits of sewing using the permanent thread are done.

Up to that point the kilt will lay flat and it is still fairly two dimensional, once the shaping starts it becomes a three dimensional construction.

Anne the Pleater

[Flyboy]

Mike and Pleater,
Thank you so much for your input. Pleater I take that by micrometer you are talking about a calliper device to measure instead of using a tape measure or ruler and if so that is a brilliant idea! I just looked on Amazon and they had ones with a digital readout and all. I might have to get me one of those, I think.

Cheers

[Lady Grey]

As an Aussie I was bought up and taught metric and that’s what I use.
Except for sewing....
1) taught by my grandmother and mother who were both raised on imperial
2) most commercial sewing patterns are USA based and imperial.
3) it’s mainly inches & half inches I use when sewing.
It’s just something I’m used to.

At Kilt Kamp Barb said to use one or the other and don’t swap them around.
Another Aussie at Kamp used metric.

I did have to search a fair bit for a tape measure with the correct increments and then at Kilt Kamp I used a pen to mark the tape with Barbs help so I had the correct marks for my pleats.
I still use that tape and it’s only for kilt making.

So pick whatever is comfortable for you.

I was born a year after currency changed and I started school a year after metric became compulsory to teach.
Therefore I’m ‘kind of’ used to both as both were used throughout my childhood.

So pick one method and stick to it and you should be fine.

[Lady Grey]

Oh
And Waist & Hip measurements look so much smaller in inches!
Vanity

[Father Bill]

I smile at this. I'm not a kilt-maker, but as a Canadian senior, I watch the transition with interest.

I measure distance in kilometres or hours of travel time.
I measure speed in km/h.
I use a ruler with inches, except when I need to use centimetres because somebody else demands it.
I was one of the teachers who in my earliest years, taught the metric system as an interesting anomaly that would come here one day.
I weigh myself in pounds.
I buy my milk in litres.
I cook in imperial but check the outdoors in Celsius.
I measure fuel efficiency in litres per 100 km... and then convert to mpg for online comparisons.

When we were first introducing metric measurement to the school system, they put a bathroom scale in kg in every staff room in our Board of Education so that teachers would become more familiar with it. My vice-principal, a man with a very dry sense of humour who hated metric with an un-reasoned passion saw me step onto the scale one day, and affecting a very straight and interested voice, asked me "How many kilometres do you way, Bill?"

My son is an engineer. All of his measurements are metric... at work. At home, it's a mix like most of the rest of Canada.

Interesting thread, folks. Thanks!

[Flyboy]

It’s funny how a lot of the commonwealth countries use a hybrid system of a bit of both,I myself:

Drive in kilometres
Body Weight in pounds or stones if I’m feeling fat
Oven temp in imperial
Measure in metric
Make recipes in imperial

[ThistleDown]

I work in leather and metal and in both I use both Metric and Imperial. In wood I use Imperial, although often the woods I use are measured only in Metric .

My wife and I travel (except for this year ) between Scotland, Canada and Switzerland on a sort of quarterly basis. My wife (a Swiss-born-educated architect) and I are captured in two measurement worlds and seem to have adjusted pretty well to both. (The US, Myanmar and Liberia are, I believe, the only three countries in the world that have not yet accepted the Metric System as an international standard.) Canada, as FB and others have said, is in the 'between' stage of conversion. So is Scotland. For Switzerland the transference in all over with!

For Ruth and me:

Weights are in Imperial and Stones and then Metric for me and in Metric and then Imperial for Ruth.
Distances travelled are in both miles and kilometers. For both of us.
Speed is in kmph. For both.
Land measurement (for me) is in inches/feet/yards; (for Ruth) in both, Metric and Imperial.
Volume is in Metric for both of us, but we understand and speak Imperial and cook equally in the latter (my cooking) and the former (her cooking).
Temperatures are in Celsius and Fahrenheit for both of us, but increasingly Celsius.

We both know that US volume measurement is different than Imperial and Metric but we are not familiar with the standard.

[Pleater]

Mike and Pleater,
Thank you so much for your input. Pleater I take that by micrometer you are talking about a calliper device to measure instead of using a tape measure or ruler and if so that is a brilliant idea! I just looked on Amazon and they had ones with a digital readout and all. I might have to get me one of those, I think.
Cheers

I gave in recently and got one with a nice big digital readout - though I do take a quick look at the actual ruler part just to double check that it is properly zeroed. My eyesight is getting to the stage where I need to take off the glasses and be careful not to get a pin in my nose when checking the line of a pleat.

My tape measures and rulers are metric one side inches the other. The rulers have the zero at the opposite ends though, which is a nuisance, I'd like a transparent ruler with the two scales one above the other.

I tend to work in Centigrade for temperature, grams or Kg for weight having worked in laboratories, but miles and mph is the only thing I can make sense of for distance or the speed of a vehicle.

My sister, 3 years younger than me, went into a maths exam and watched the teacher turn pale when he looked at the paper, then stagger out. She had been taught fractions, yds, ft and ins etc, and the exam paper used decimals and metric units. All but one failed the exam.

Anne the Pleater

[Pleater]

Thinking about it, though - my hand is 4 inches or 10 cm across the palm, 3 inches across the knuckles, from the tip of my thumb to shoulder point is a yard, elbow to middle fingertip is 1/2 a yard - fingertip to shoulder point is a metre. I do tend to use them when checking fabric lengths.

Anne the Pleater

[OC Richard]

I'm a child of the 1960s and at that time, here in California, we were taught metric from the start.

We were told that the old system would soon be phased out, and our generation would be the first all-metric generation in the US.

I was dismayed when the metric fervor abated and eventually was forgot.

And we always had metric tools about the house, due to my dad doing his own maintenance and repairs to his French car.

Yes it's odd that while the British military measure clothing using metric British civilians measure kilts and jackets in inches...but hats in the metric. BTW metric shoe sizes always seem to be more accurate than either the American or British sizing systems. Since shoe labels often have all three, I've learned to ignore the UK and US size and go by the Euro size.

Bagpipe specs have long been done in inches, but no fractions! Inches and fractions don't necessarily go together, and pipe makers generally speak in terms of .472 inch and so forth. That's the system I'm used to. I hate fractions.