My First self-made kilt: the canvas job goes public

[cavscout]

Looks great! I love the color and that right edge is kickin'

[The Wizard of BC]

Alan,

A few of us Professional kiltmakers (read starving sewing machine operators) want you to figure up your total cost on that kilt.

Use the current minimum wage X no. of hours you spent + cost of materials.

Then add a couple of side slash pockets, a couple of rear welt pockets and figure again.

include the time you spent scratching you head, the time you spent sitting and just looking at the thing, the time you spent ripping out and re-sewing, the time you spent talking to others, asking questions, and posting on the progress.

Please post your answer and shock everyone.

[Canuck]

Alan,

A few of us Professional kiltmakers (read starving sewing machine operators) want you to figure up your total cost on that kilt.

( snip)
Please post your answer and shock everyone.

Yep I was in on that conversation (with Steve) so I wanna know too.

[Dreadbelly]

And there is another plain coloured kilt that I would wear.

And it boils down to that I want my kilt to look like a kilt. Some of the plain colour variants just look to "skirty."

[Alan H]

Alan,

A few of us Professional kiltmakers (read starving sewing machine operators) want you to figure up your total cost on that kilt.

Use the current minimum wage X no. of hours you spent + cost of materials.

Then add a couple of side slash pockets, a couple of rear welt pockets and figure again.

include the time you spent scratching you head, the time you spent sitting and just looking at the thing, the time you spent ripping out and re-sewing, the time you spent talking to others, asking questions, and posting on the progress.

Please post your answer and shock everyone.

Sure....

I bought the canvas...3.8 meters of it on ebay for $16. That's about 4 yards. Shipping was $4. I bought a spool of thread for $2. I bought 8 inches (I think) of wide velcro for $8, if I remember rightly.

So the materials were about $30, or close to that.

A.) I spread it out and stared at it and hauled Rocky's Philabeg out and stared at it and thought, "How am I gonna do this"? .... .75 hour
B.) Washed the canvas to shrink it before sewing .... 1 hour
C.) Ironed the dickens out of it to flatten it after washing... 1 hour
D.) Measured it and cut it out ... .75 hour
E.) The Marathon Saturday... measured the apron and cut out the taper, hemmed the right edge of the apron, and fringed... stitched over the left edge of the apron...stitched in (in the wrong place, had to rip it out, later) the INNER fold of the first deep pleat on the left side... stitched in about 10 pleats, and ironed the bedickens out of it........ 6 hours
F.) the two evenings after work... seven more pleats, ran out of material. Ironed them down..... 5 hours
G.) the long evening after work... added more material, hem hidden at the rear fold of the box pleat, did the box pleat, overlocked the raw edge of the inner apron, ironed it down like crazy... 3 hours.
H.) Soaked in Downy & warm water (for three hours, but it only took me a few minutes to set it up).....0.25 hours
G.) Washed/soaked in Downey (cycle takes about 1.75 hours, but most of that time I'm doing other stuff) .... 0.25
H.) Finishing...cutting off loose threads, raw edges that ravel a bit, etc and sewing in the velcro.... 1 hour

Total.... call it 19 hours. That's reasonably close.

19 hours x $15/hour = $285
19 hours x $10/hour = $190
19 hours x $7.50/hour = $142.50

Add $30 for materials to that and it gives you an idea as to why kilts cost what they do.

NOTE: In Barb T's book she writes that at "Kilt Camp" a novice can turn out a traditional 7-8 yard tartan kilt in about 40 hours. An experienced kiltmaker can make one in about 20 hours.

I'm guessing that if I were to make another kilt out of more easy-to-handle material, knowing what I know, now, I could do it in about 13-15 hours and make a better kilt. I think I did a pretty decent job for a total newbie, working without a pattern.


BTW, I had a guy at the coffeeshop take those pics when I'd only had the kilt on for about 45 minutes. I wore it for about 7 hours that day and by the time the day was over the canvas had stretched and the "gap" on the right side had closed up by an inch, making the kilt look a lot better.

My sewing experience?

Sailcovers for my boat
a couple of Frostline kits...a small backpack, a down vest
general repair of stuff...packs, bags, ripped-out pockets on jeans etc.
two duffel bags (no patttern)

HOWEVER, with this experience in mind, I wouldn't make another kilt out of Carhart canvas. The stuff was hard to work with, it creases the second you sit on it, and it just doesn't drape very well. Now, other manufacturers of canvas may produce products which work better. My next non-tartan kilt (if I make one) would be out of a cotton/polyester twill, sort of like Dockers pants. There's a reason that Pittsburgh Kilts and Freedom Kilts and Utilikilts use a lot of this stuff. It's easy to work with, won't crease in the blink of an eye and drapes well. It might not (or it might, I dunno) take a pleat crease and hold it as well, but in a contemporary kilt, who cares? Just sew the pleat down. The time I spent hassling with the stiffness of the material was *easily* a lot more than what it would take to sew the 17 pleats I made, down their entire length.

There ya go.

[possingk]

Alan,
I want to thank you for all the posts over the past few days about your first kilt. I have been considering making one myself, and not that anything has changed, but seeing the last post and the cost breakdown was quite eye opening. It makes me appreciate my USA Kilt a whole lot more. Finding out how much work went into you making your kilt, and thinking about the little machine stitching I did on my SWK to sew the pleats down, it seems to me that having it made the better route.

Congrats on the kilt though it looks great, and will be my inspiration if I ever start my own. Of course I should finish the quilt I started for my wife for our wedding (maybe I can finish that before our two year anniversary)

Thanks again

[Alan H]

Welt pockets....I have NO idea what this would take/cost. No clue.

Slash pockets, in front, hidden in a pleat.... Well, that won't work on this kilt because the pleats don't come around far enough. But if I added two more pleats on each side and narrowed the apron down to 12 inches, then I could put in slash pockets hidden in the fold of the second pleat, I *think*. I'd say for me...add in another 1.5 hours per pocket, 3 hours for two of 'em. I'd fumble over it bigtime the first time, because I'd have to figure out what works and I'm pretty sure that my first attempt wouldn't be right. So I'd have to do it twice, though the second time would go faster. Six hours is not unreasonable, but I *might* be able to do it in five.

I'm guessing that once they had the design nailed down, a pro could do slash pockets in roughly an hour per pocket.

On the subject of material.... Retail for 13 ounce worsted 100% tartan wool is, call it roughly.... $60 a yard. Fraser and Kirkbright sells a mediumweight wool through www.thescottishweaver.com for the SHOCKING price of $32.75 a yard. This is a DEAL. You can buy a few yards of 11 ounce poly-viscose from the KiltStore for $25 a yard.

That's retail. OK, so let's pretend that wholesale is half of that...and this is *pretend*, OK? So double-width worsted wool from Locharron probably wholesales to a kiltmaker in Scotland who doesn't have to pay import tax or a shipping cost, about $30 a yard. Ship that stuff to someone in North America and the cost is more like about $40-45 a yard. The poly-viscose that your kiltmaker in Scotland can get for $12 a yard, costs the North American guy more like $18 a yard. I'm *estimating* here, OK?

So a "four yard kilt", ripped out of double-width material...will cost your North American Kiltmaker...

$80-90 for Locharron/House of Edgar worsted mediumweight wool
$36-40 for Marton Mills polyester-viscose

Double those numbers for an "eight yard kilt".

Isn't it reasonable that a trained kiltmaker makes $15 an hour? I mean, if that kiltmaker works a normal 40 hour week and takes two weeks of vacation a year, that's a $30,000 annual income. Nobody is getting rich, here.

If we forget the storefont rental, the cost of the bookkeeper, the advertising, the e-mail and papermail correspondance, the hit that PayPal or Visa or MasterCard takes...the heating bill, the insurance, the cost of the sewing machines...on and on and on and on and ON.....just throw all that out of the window, this is how it stacks up. Remember that Barb T. a *very* experienced kiltmaker, estimates that it takes a pro about 20 hours to turn out a handsewn, traditional kilt.

20 hours to make a traditional kilt x $15 an hour.... $300
$160-180 for the cost of the 100% worsted kilting wool... total is $460!!! That's the drop-dead-minimum a custom-made eight-yard kilt should cost.

Let's say our contemporary kiltmaker is buying cotton/poly twill in bulk. That probably wholesales to him at about $6 a yard. It's only fair that this soul makes $15 an hour....see the above calculation. Let's say it takes ten hours to machine-sew up a contemporary kilt that has four yards of material in it. That makes the math easy! We'll say that the fabric is double-width, so they only need two yards to make it..

10 hours to make a machine-sewn contemporary kilt x $15 an hour = $150
two yards of twill at $6.00 a yard = $12
buttons, thread, d-rings, whatever else... $3

....and your contemporary kilt costs, **drop-dead minimum**, $165 to make.

Anyone who can sell a kilt for less than these numbers is either A.) starving, or B.) a magician.

Add in the cost of the storefont lease, the cost of the bookkeeper, the advertising, the e-mail and papermail correspondance, the ding from PayPal or Visa or MasterCard...the heating bill, the insurance, the electricity, the cost of the sewing machines... all of it, and that kilt HAS to cost at least $200....and STILL, nobody is getting rich, here.

[Canuck]

Thank you. Alan
You helped us out.
Cheers
Robert

[Alan H]

Alan,
I want to thank you for all the posts over the past few days about your first kilt. I have been considering making one myself, and not that anything has changed, but seeing the last post and the cost breakdown was quite eye opening. It makes me appreciate my USA Kilt a whole lot more. Finding out how much work went into you making your kilt, and thinking about the little machine stitching I did on my SWK to sew the pleats down, it seems to me that having it made the better route.

Congrats on the kilt though it looks great, and will be my inspiration if I ever start my own. Of course I should finish the quilt I started for my wife for our wedding (maybe I can finish that before our two year anniversary)

Thanks again

You're certainly welcome!

The upshot is, if you think that making a kilt would be fun, then by all means make one...or two or a dozen! I enjoy it, so it's worth it to me.

If you don't think that the process of making the kilt would be fun, then you're a whole, whole lot better off buying one from one of the guys that advertise or post here....Freedom Kilts, R-Kilts, USA Kilts, Bear Kilts, Union Kilts, Pittsbugh Kilts, Stillwater Kilts, King Kilts and so on. Besides, I know full -well that I won't approach their kind of quality until I've made at least 4-5 kilts, so you'll get a better kilt if you buy from them rather than making your own.

If you're a very experienced sewer and you really invest your time, then you might do almost as well, first time out of the blocks. Maybe.

I will be making two kilts (this is the first one) BEFORE tackling the X Marks kilt, itself. The next one will be wool with a sett size similar to the X Marks one, but the material will cost me around $30 since I'll be getting it off of ebay or who-knows where on deep, deep discount. I'll be hand-sewing this next one. After I've practiced twice, I think that then, and not before then, I might be ready to tackle the Real Deal...that wonderful tartan we had made.

At that point I think my kiltmaking days will be over, though I have a confession to make.....

...I'm thinking, after I make the X Marks kilt, of buying some polyester viscose and doing another one, and then offering a "Casual Kiltmaking" class through our local adult school.

[Alan H]

Thank you. Alan
You helped us out.
Cheers
Robert

You're certainly welcome. I don't know how you guys do it.