Quote Originally Posted by The Wizard of BC
Start with your hip measurment.

Then subtract the apron width.

divide the remainder by the pleat reveal measurment.

This will give you the no. of pleats.

Build the kilt using your hip measurment. Make all the pleats even and straight.
The taper is in the fell area only and should come out to equal your waist.
(Waist measurment minus apron width divided by no. of pleats will equal the pleat width at the waist.)

Wash your fabric before cutting in warm water with about a half cup of Downey. Repeat about six times. Then into the dryer on cotton setting.
Then and only then cut to length.

Hope that helps. If not, call me.

The first steps are pretty close to what I figured out. This is how I did it.

I had a four yard section, cut out of a double-wide, four yard piece I bought. OK four yards is 144 inches, so that's how much fabric I have to work with.

My waist is 40 inches. OK, so that means the apron should be about 20 inches at the top.

I looked at Rocky's philabeg and duplicated the amount of A-shaping he did on that kilt. I made it symmetrical, of course, and so the selvedge edge of the over-apron is 23 inches..

Anyway, If the apron is 23 inches at the selvedge and the under-apron is 23 inches at the selvedge, then that's a 46 -inch bite out of my 144 inches. I therefore have 138 inches of material for pleats.

I wanted 18-22 pleats, and I wanted to have a 1-inch to 1.25 inch reveal. I felt that a 1.5 inch reveal was too big. OK, so if I need to cover 20 inches around me buttocks to get right 'round my waist, and there's a 1.25 inch reveal, that means I'm aiming for 16 pleats....nope. Not enough pleats, says I. But if I have 1 a inch reveal, then I'll have 20 pleats.

***ERROR..need to be thinking about BUTT measurement, not waist measurement here, but I'll continue with my thought process.****

so therefore I'll split the difference between 1.25 inch reveal and a 1 inch reveal and that will give me about 18 pleats.

138 inches of material divided by 18 pleats is 7.6 inches, so I should be able to make 7 inch pleats in this puppy, meaning a 3.5 inch overlap, and be good to go.

But in fact I did four inch pleats with a 2 inch overlap and I'm running out of material and I'm going to have to A.) add my excess from the other half of the fabric I bought and hide the seam in the pleats, and keep pleating, and 2.) keep going to 22 pleats to get 'right round my butt.

That's OK, 22 pleats looks even better than 18, so I'm OK with it, just confused. You know, now I'm wondering if in fact the piece I got really WAS four yards and not three. I'm going to have to check it.

Now, about washing 6 times with downey... I sure didn't do that. I washed once with regular soap in the machine and dried in the dryer on hot before I tried working on it. I figured I'd get most of the shrinkage out in one washing.. OK, so when it's done I'll try washing it a bunch of times with Downy and see how it goes. Wish I'd washed it a couple more times before I jumped in!

THANKS, Steve!