Is this a well-made kilt?

[Nemuragh]

You should find the bottom of where the stitching starts right at the level of your hips or the crest of the butt.
.

Just for clarification by ‘crest of the butt’ are you referring to the widest part of the seat?

Thanks

John

[ctbuchanan]

And after I read this concise explanation from the Wizard, about all that goes into a kilt, I appreciate once again the "art" of kiltmaking and the work that goes into learning and implementing that art.

So when people ask me how much my bespoke kilts cost, I answer that they cost as much as any true work of art would. My oldest kilt is going on 40 years now and other than a bit of a touch up by Bonnie Heather Greene a few years ago, it looks as good as the day I got it.

So I figure that kilt cost me about $10 a year (adjusted for inflation etc) and will be handed down long after me. That's about what a fancy coffee at Starbucks costs I think (I'm too cheap to buy one there).

CTB

[Steve Ashton]

Just for clarification by ‘crest of the butt’ are you referring to the widest part of the seat?

Thanks

John

Another way to look at this is - if - you were to back up to a wall, the first part of your butt that would contact the wall.

This also happens to be very close on most people to the hip joint.

[Lady Grey]

Looking at the pictures I can’t help thinking the Kilt needs a really good steam press.
If you took out the basting and put it on it may not be falling into the correct shape after being packaged and transported.
Wool and steam can do wondrous things.

Agree that the buckles may need to be moved to correct the apron gap.

[Barb T]

HI all - sorry to be late to the party as usual!! I would like to correct something that Steve wrote in his first post. He said:

There are a couple of different ways to achieve this look. One is to vary the width of the pleats to keep the pattern uniform. One pleat may be a slightly different width than the one right next to it. This takes an artists eye and some level of skill and a very good 'feel' to Tartan to achieve successfully. This is the method Barb Tewksbury teaches in "The Art of Kiltmaking".

Actually, this is not what I teach in The Art of Kiltmaking. I do not vary the pleat width to achieve pleating to the sett - in fact, I work very hard to make each pleat exactly the same width to 1/32". On very rare occasions (I can think of one or two kilts out of the hundreds I've made) where a few pleats had to be slightly different in width in order not to lose a prominent stripe, but those kilts are few and far between and very much the exception to the rule of making all pleats the same size when pleating to the sett.

The Art of Kiltmaking has the following additional guidelines for pleating to the sett:

• A pivot must be centered in a pleat (or in some cases split down the middle along the edges of two pleats).
• Pleats must be a mirror image on opposite sides of the pleat containing the pivot (i.e., the elements chosen must be identical but in mirror image on opposite sides of the pleat containing the pivot).
• Pleats should be chosen so as not to lose stripes in the taper toward the waist (i.e., not make spearpoints).
• A prominent non-pivot stripe should be held along the edge of a pleat so that it is not lost in the pleat taper.
• The pleating must reproduce the tartan sett as closely as possible while still maintaining the rules above AND keeping all of the pleats the same with.

Here are a few examples of the rules above. In each case, the look is not achieved by varying the pleat width - the pleats are all the same size.

The red stripe in the kilt below is a pivot, which is centered in the pleat, and pleats are mirror images on both sides of that pleat. Ditto the double black stripe, which is the other pivot.



First example below violates the rules (losing a prominent stripe in the taper, making spearpoints); the second one does not:



And here's one with split pivots, but the pleats are still mirror images on both sides of the pair that split the pivot. And all these pleats are the same width - the pleating is not achieved by varying pleat width.



The result of meeting all these rules is that the tartan sett can rarely be reproduced exactly across the pleats at the hips (and if the pleats taper at all, of course the sett won't be reproduced exactly at the waist). This is what makes pleating a traditional kilt by traditional methods a challenge, particularly for complex tartans. Here's an example - it's close but not mathematically perfect:




And here's one (not mine) that violates all the rules that I use....



If I were to analyze the kilt that Callum originally asked about by the standards that I use for kiltmaking, I would say that it fails to meet several of the rules that I use.

But, as Steve says, there is more than one way to make a kilt.

[Calum]

Thank you to everyone who replied, especially the Wizard of BC and Barb T for your informative, well-thought-out responses. I am actually reasonably pleased with the kilt. I like that it was hand-made locally and I understand this means there is a human element involved and the end result will be imperfect. Probably the most annoying thing is the pucker, which is not caused by wearing the kilt incorrectly, as it is still visible when the kilt is laid out.



I checked with the kiltmaker and she sews everything by hand except the waistband, which she does by machine. Maybe she slipped or something. However, I suppose the pucker can be covered up with a belt. Most people probably won't look at the back closely enough to notice the difference in pleat width, and if the curl in the apron is common, then I probably won't be the only one at an event with that problem.

I intend to wear the kilt to a highland gathering in October. Will post pics then. Thanks again, everyone.