and do it….or if you like living dangerously, don’t pin your hem. Slap it down on the sewing machine, set to straight stitch at the size of stitch that you like and go to it. Hem that puppy, the full length of the fabric. Try hard to keep the stitching at an even distance from the edge of the fabric. I find that a hem line about half an inch from the edge looks about right. OK, let’s talk about stitching. In a traditional (more-or-less) kilt where parts of it are machine-sewn, I think it looks best if the machine stitches are really small. OK, but this isn’t a traditional kilt. If you go look at a pair of Levi’s, you’ll notice that the gold thread is stitched in with pretty large stitches. Personally, I think that a contemporary kilt looks good, especially a canvas one, with bigger stitches in most places. Why don’t you take some fabric-*/ scraps, double them over, and practice running a few lines of stitching down ‘em. Pick a stitch size that looks good to you, and then tackle your hem. I like about 6 stitches to the inch, personally.
Figuring out your Pleats All right, time to set up the kilts pleating structure. Lay the whole length of fabric out on the floor, or your work table, with the outside of the kilt facing up and the hem/selvedge away from you. It’s time to talk about the nitty gritty of this design, which makes it workable for many sizes of guys. You are going to combine a number of standard-width box pleats with varying apron widths to create a kilt that works for you. All the box pleats will be 3 inches wide. The apron will vary between 6 - 11 inches, depending on the size of the wearer. As time goes on and more X-Markers make X-Kilts, I’ve learned something. I recommend that you do one of two things with your over-apron. Either make it very narrow, like 6-8 inches overall, or make it very wide, like 4 inches narrower than your half-waist measurement. Do one or the other, don’t try tosplit the difference, it just doesn’t look good. However, this is YOUR kilt, eh? So do what you want. If you’re a BIG guy, with a 50-inch waist and you want the narrow-apron look, then you might bump your apron up to 10-11 inches. MOST important point…as you start making your kilt focus on the RUMP measurement, not the waist measurement. Forget everything you ever thought about when buying pants. YOU are a KILTMAKER! Ha!…..so focus on your rump, not your waist. You’re going to build this kilt by combining a certain number of three inch box pleats and an apron width to go around your RUMP size, not your WAIST size. OK, got that? RUMP, not waist. Here are some examples: 30 inch rump measurement; “wide” apron look (very small guy):
