Box pleats what?

Here is the beginning of my kilt DIY blog. I will post in 3 installments because it will be image heavy.

This was started by my inability to afford more Utilikilts. I found www.xmarksthescot.com. They have tons of posts in the forums about DIY kilts and one guy even wrote up a step-by-step. I may interject now again about what I did different from him, but for the most part his guide is followed to the letter. Well, I must have erred somewhere because my kilt is a little big but that is way better than being too small.

First get the directions here so you can follow along:
http://www.geocities.com/alanhsails/X-Kilt_final2.pdf


To the left you see the black cotton twill I have, 60in wide by 3 yards, ready to be cut on the fold and sewn end to end* to make a 30in wide 6 yd long piece ( I am fat so I need a big kilt).

I have washed it in hot water and dried it on high in the dryer, so it is pre-shrunk and fully washable. I have also ironed out the major wrinkles.
*contrary to directions, but I took the risk and was able to hide the seam in a pleat easily



The first step (after all the measuring) is to hem the bottom.
Here is my hem pinned and sewn.
As you can see, it is folded up toward me and
I folded mine over twice for a neat finish.

I ironed before I sewed it down.
I want this to be a very neat "formal" kilt so I took extra time to keep it very neat.







Here is the framing square I used to make the measurements for the 'fall' and the pleats.
To the lower right is the
fall line and the beginning of the pleat lines
(I numbered the pleats
and marked them all
with hash marks before
drawing the full line)
I am using a flat square tailor's chalk to draw the lines.