First Post? I'll start with my kilt-making days gone by..

Let's kick this blog off with some old material - literally!

Although I don't make many kilts at the moment I'd like to share with you some fab images from those days when I did.

The marking out of a kilt can seem a complicated business - until you know how! A few mathamatical sums and a fastidious eye results in a traditional garment containing a whopping 8 yards of fabric.

Not to mention of course the entire garment is hand-sewn, (well I have to admit to 1 solitary line of machine stitching when applying the waistband) but the rest is completely sewn with a needle and strong thread.

The pressing of the pleats is crucial to the kilt. The most pleats I can recall sewing into a kilt was 37 - but they average from 25 to 34 pleats depending on the hip or 'seat' measurement.

My favourite part of constructing the kilt (apart from the intitial marking out) is the sewing-in of the fringes. These sit down the outer edge of the front skirt. I am also partial to cutting and placing the 'chapes'. These are the peices of fabric that are attached to the buckles on the back of the kilt. The art in this is to have these sitting on the back of the kilt so that they blend in seamlessly with the pattern or 'sett' of the tartan.

Each tartan is unique and here in Scotland we have a wealth of 100's of tartans to chose from. I have made around 230 kilts so far - men's, women's and children's in woollen tartan, silk, camoflage fabric and denim.

Here is our handsome Will from the USA, who I used to 'nanny' when he and his twin sister were just babies. This is the second kilt I made for him and was specially commissioned  for his wedding day in 2011.  

I have hundreds and hundreds of tartan remnants in my Stash Galore, but that's another story.....