"You're the last person I would have ever expected to see in a skirt" -Chad
DeVries
My lovely and brilliant wife, Cindy, got me a kilt pattern and material for valentines day, and I put together a Kilt for
myself. This is (will be) a short account of the trials and tribulations that I went through to build the beast.
Well, it's a year later and I haven't put anything here, despite a steady stream of clicks, so I'm going to make the effort to update the page.
The pattern I used for the kilt was from Folkwear, and isn't so much a pattern as a list of directions. It gives you a method for measuring the bits of the body that are important (waist, hips, waist-to-knee, etc.) and formulas for figuring out how many pleats and length of cloth you need. I don't recall exactly, but I think that my kilt needed around 40 pleats, which is pretty large since I'm a fat guy.
Since Cindy is allergic to wool, the traditional kilt material, she procured a nice cotton tartan, which can't be told apart unless you touch it. I don't recall where she got it, but it was ordered on-line. For the buckle and belt (the kilt is buckled on at the side) we just bought a leather belt from a second hand shop, cut off the ends and used them. We actually ruined a belt doing this and had to replace it, but since it was very cheap it wasn't a big deal.
The kilt was quite a bit of work, and I messed up a few places. If I had to do it over again (which I'm hoping to when I lose weight) I would take a little more time and do it right. Not that it turned out badly, just not as perfectly as I would have liked. It's been quite a while since I actually did the work, but my recolectin is that it took 20-30 hours to complete. I think it cost a total of around $125.00 or so for patern, fabric, etc.
I've been wanting to get a good sporrin, maby one with furr and silverl and such on the front, but they're very pricy and I don't wear the kilt that often, so I'm putting it off.