In a trad kilt, the pleat stitching is not supposed to show. If you machine stitch the pleats from the outside, the line of stitching shows. If you hand stitch carefully, the stitches don't show. That's why trad kilts are hand stitched.

Having said this, Rocky makes his kilts by machine stitching the pleats from the _inside_ so that the stitches don't show. It is really really hard to get the stripes to line up perfectly doing it this way, but Rocky has gotten really really good at it. He does it because he doesn't like hand stitching, not because it's any faster (he says that he rips out about 1 in 6 pleats) or because it's any stronger.

I can stitch 5-6 pleats an hour by hand. I could probably do only about 2 an hour net if I tried to do it Rocky's way!