To the stripe or set?

[Darrell The Barber]

I’m getting ready to make my first kilt I have the tartan on hand and I’m looking for ideas on pleating the XMarks tartan, I will be knife pleating it , I’m thinking on pleating to the yellow stripe
Cheers!

[figheadair]

It may depend on the tartan can you enlighten us?

[Darrell The Barber]

[QUOTE=figheadair;1389113]It may depend on the tartan can you enlighten us?[/QUOTE

I will be using the XMarks tartan ,I’m thinking to pleat to the yellow stripe however I’m looking for suggestions on what others have done.

[OC Richard]

I know various people have posted photos of their XMarks kilts over the years, have you tried the search feature?

I'm not sure how many runs of that fabric were done, but it's safe to say that after each run members might be posting photos of their new kilts.

I will say that for months now the "advanced" search feature has been disabled for me, I just get a popup warning/re-routing. That was a very handy feature. So for searching this site I've found Google to be better.

Googling turned up this thread, it's pleated to the yellow stripe as you suggested.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-stripe-34507/

Here you can see a demonstration of pleating options

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...-please-49952/

Given those I would probably pleat to the white stripe.

I do think that in general pleating to the stripe is better because 1) it gives you two looks for the price of one, and 2) because in most things I prefer the concept of "form follows function". (Why try to make pleated fabric look like flat non-pleated fabric? Is trompe l'oeil really what Highland dress has ever been about?)

However I do recognise that the effect of some tartans is dependent on the balance of colours, and this is upset no matter what stripe is selected. So there are a few tartans that I think look best pleated to the sett.

[Pleater]

Having been making kilts for a while now, I suggest making a few folds in various options and seeing how they look - I usually find that one option will proclaim itself the right one for the project. Just keep trying out various ploys until you find the one that works.

Early on in my career with kilts I had a three colour fabric which was a bit of a Goldilocks problem - a row of any of the bands looked wrong - I still pleated to the stripe, but the stripe of each colour in turn which kept the pleasant balance of colours and turned out to give an exactly right feeling pleat depth - so it was that one. This is one of the rejected foldings and the multicolour one which was selected.

[Tobus]

...I would probably pleat to the white stripe.

I believe that's what I would do as well if it were my kilt. I have kilts pleated to the sett, pleated to minor stripes, and pleated to bold stripes. My favourite look, by far, is pleated to the boldest or most prominent (widest) stripe in the sett. It fills the pleat width, gives them more visual uniformity, and makes them stand out distinctly from the tartan pattern, especially with a narrow pleat width. Admittedly, my preference for using the boldest stripe is based on the look of military kilts. I have come to really like that look over the years. The wide white stripe in the XMTS tartan would give the pleats a look somewhat similar to this:



Of course, it really comes down to personal preference and the "theme" you want your kilt to display.

[Jock Scot]

Interestingly most civilian kilts will usually be pleated to the sett unless a specific request to do otherwise is made to the traditional Scottish kilt maker. To be fair, I am not sure if modern kilt makers in Scotland still follow this trend, but when I asked one very traditional and successful kilt maker a couple of years ago about civilian pleating to the stripe the reply was, well ,errr, ummmm-------unprintable.

[OC Richard]

It would be interesting to find out from the experts when pleating to the sett became popular.

There's a distinct disadvantage to a kilt 1) being pleated to the sett and 2) having belt loops: if you move the straps & buckles to make the kilt smaller or larger the entire rear of the kilt is now off-centre.

While a kilt pleated to the stripe and lacking loops will look the same when re-sized.

This is important in the Pipe Band world where a band's set of kilts might be worn for a half-century and each kilt might have to be re-sized numerous times.

No worries if it's your personal kilt and you stay the same size. My weight has changed considerably over the years and my kilts have been repeatedly adjusted (by myself).

Now the OP's question was specifically about the XMarks tartan which is an ordinary symmetrical repeating sett and offers multiple good places to pleat to the stripe.

I recently got a Hunting Stewart kilt which presents challenges for the pleater.

I very much dislike having the pleats alternate between the yellow and red stripes, and I told USA kilts they could do anything but that!

I really like what they did do, as it creates a nice balance between the brown and grey areas. The only issue with alternating pleats is that it makes the kilt, at first glance, appear to have half as many pleats as it does.

[figheadair]

It would be interesting to find out from the experts when pleating to the sett became popular.

Bob Martin always recokoned that pleating to sett came in at the end of the 19th or early 20th century. I've certainly never seen an older kilt pleated to sett. Bob also said that pleating to sett often needs more material and resulted in the standard 8 yard kilt.

[Jock Scot]

I would say the same Peter and probably based on information from the same source.