How (Not) to Make a Kilt

At Christmas, my son-in-law said he wanted a kilt. He does car line every morning at the middle school where he teaches and wearing costumes gets everyone in and out and ready for school. People love car line with Mr. Joiner waving his hands and insulting everyone’s driving, heritage, and half-awake children. It’s become a thing, and things matter. People push their children to get in the car so they can push them out of the car while Mr. Joiner directs the sleepy and under caffeinated. My daughter once casually remarked to a friend that she used to work at her husband’s school.

“Oh! You’re that Mrs. Joiner!” the woman exclaimed.

So, I knew the kilt could be important. I have been sewing for a long time. I made both of my daughters’ wedding gowns and attendants’ dresses and also my daughter-in-law’s. I thought I could do a little research and be completely prepared for kilt making.

If only it was that simple.

There are no paper patterns, first of all. Secondly, there is no such thing as a kilt. “Kilt,” it turns out, is a general term for a pleated or sort of pleated garment worn by men, or sometimes women. There are even tiny ones to adorn children. To make a kilt, you must decide how far back in time you wish to go. Early kilts were folded garments with extra fabric tossed up and over the shoulder. How they kept them on during war is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a good leather belt works wonders. I don’t know as I decided folded kilts were not workable for the seriousness of the half-darkness of school car line. Someone might think Mr. Joiner was just a blob of early morning fog and run him over and my daughter would never forgive me for getting him flattened.

So, I looked on the internet at images and videos showing regimental kilts, designer kilts, cut-a-way kilts that were more male stripper than coverage, and a lot of things in-between. My first how-to video was a large Scotsman using enough fabric to wrap my entire house. My second video wasn’t much different. A lot of kilt makers are muscular, bearded men with heavy brogues. I had my DNA done, and I am Scottish on the Hankins side of my ancestry. It has been a long time since anyone had a connection to the old country. It was taking several replays of each sentence to understand what was being said. I needed a better way to join the art of kilt making.

I did finally find a kilt pattern for sale. However, upon reading the description, it explained there was no actual paper pattern in the envelope, just an explanation of how to make the kilt. Yeah, no. I had read those explanations on several internet sites. “When you’re measuring for your sket,” they begin. “Sket?” I thought. “So that’s what the big hairy Scotsman was saying!” Finally, I sat with the fabric on my left, the laptop in front of me, and my iPhone on my right to look up the words I had never heard before. Pinterest and I were becoming close friends.

The breakthrough came when someone sketched the kilt looking down from the top. Put together with everything else I had learned, I decided that would be the pattern for my kilt. I sent my daughter a text that read, “I need you to measure around your husband’s butt.” Not what a mother says to her child, but with getting the sket right and the pleating in order you have to have that measurement and I had stupidly only asked for his waist measurement at Christmas.

I finally made what I thought was a good approximation of a kilt. Maybe not entirely regimental, but it looked good. So, I went off to the fabric store to get the leather buckle closures. Indiana is not a good place for kilt making, apparently. No one has leather buckle closures. So, I left Pinterest and went to Etsy. I ordered the buckles to be sent, it said, by Royal Mail. They could have swum it here on a turtle, by then, with a red bearded Scotsman doing the rowing, and I would not have been surprised.

Bless the British Isles, they arrived in two weeks’ time. They are beautiful things, actually. I was happy to sew them, by hand, on the kilt. I didn’t make a sporran, because I had a wedding gown waiting for alterations. (The little purse that hangs in front of the kilt is a sporran. King Charles III has one that looks well used.)

I mailed the kilt, and you can see in the picture that it has been added to the car line fashion show. Finally, I believed I could move on and work on the wedding gown, the memory of kilt making tucking into the past. Or, at least, that’s what I thought until my husband opened email and said, “Honey, why is there an email saying. ‘Welcome to the 42 nd Royal Highland Regiment of Foot’!?!” I don’t think I officially joined them, but there were a lot of words where my Iphone was unclear about the translation. If you open Instagram and see a picture of a 70-something woman marching with the famed Black Watch you’ll know it’s me.