The width does matter. The stabilizer is a rectangle, but, if the pleats at the hip are bigger than the pleats at the waist, you can't fit a rectangle to something that is actually an arc. So, you put in something just wide enough to sew in right at the waist. And this is OK, because it's really only at the waist where you're pulling on the kilt straps that you need to keep the kilt from stretching.
The canvas that you put in on top of the stabilizer and that does go from the top of the kilt to the bottom of the fell is put in pleated so that the canvas can be wider at the hip end of the pleats and narrower at the waist end. Kind of like those luggage conveyers in the the airport that have the overlapping panels that slide together along the straight-aways of the luggage carousel and fan where the conveyor belt goes around a corner.
What do I mean by buckling? This isn't as much of a problem if you only put a waist buckle on a kilt, but most kilts nowadays are made with two buckles. If someone buckles the waist buckle tight, and then buckles the hip buckle tight, the back of the kilt needs to be pretty stiff to keep it from bunching up between the hips and the top of the kilt and creating folds across the pleats. The problem is even worse if the kilts has loops and someone wears a belt through the loops - that can really pull up the kilt and cause folds across the pleats. Having pleats in the canvas also stiffens the pleats in a top-bottom direction but gives it a lot of flexibility across the pleats.
Barb
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