If you haven't been over to the Angry Chicken blog yet and seen Amy's Apron project called Tie One On, then you need to scoot over there and check it out. As always I am way behind the eight ball, and had not noticed this phenomenal wave of apron love over there.
(Hey - all of the apron entries for the Plaid Theme are up - you can find them here).
So once I did notice what was going on, (this was only very recently), the plaid theme seemed to be whistling a jaunty tune, even though I was too late to enter. By an amazing stroke of extreme good luck, Amy then extended the deadline by one month!
I found a nice and large wool plaid men's dress shirt and got to sewing.
Kitchen Kilt with Sporran Pocket:
Click on any picture to open a larger version to see details.
Lay the shirt out on a large flat surface.
Cut along the front facings in a straight line to remove the buttons and buttonholes. Be careful to leave any front pockets undisturbed on the shirt. Leave enough fabric between any front pockets and the cut edge so that later it will be easy to fold over the edge and use stitchwitch to create a hem. These hems run vertically along what was the front of the shirt and will be at the back of the apron when it is finished.
Measure at least 2 inches down from the top of the shoulder seam/armhole seam. Make a mark on the sleeve and cut straight across the sleeve. Do the same to the other sleeve to remove it. You should have about 2 to 3 inches of sleeve sticking out from the armhole seam.
Cut off the yoke carefully following the seam where the yoke meets the rest of the shirt back. Use the lines that cross horizontally across the back to guide your cutting so that it comes out even. This cut edge will become the waist of the kilt. The back of the shirt will become the front of the kilt.
Open the shirt and lay it out flat. The shirt fronts will still have the collar hanging on with the yoke attached. Cut the yoke/collar off the front of the shirt being careful to match your cutting to the cut edge of the shirt back so that the waist line will be extended evenly all the way around the shirt.
Here you can see my shirt drooping over the edge of the table, not following directions very closely. This is the wrong side of the shirt with the sleeve stubs folded in.
Now the shirt is ready. Lay it out nice and flat, with the right side of the fabric facing you. Fold the little leftover sleeve flaps together and underneath the shirt so that it lays flat. Figure out the size of the pleats you would like. Make your pleats over the side seams and stubby sleeve flaps to hide them. I made two pleats on one side of the shirt, and one pleat on the other side. Try doing a pleat combination, where one pleat is wider than the other, this always looks very nice.
Here is the shirt from the right side with the pleats folded and pinned flat. I have two pleats on the right and one pleat on the left. The lines in the plaid really helped keep all of the pleat folds straight and even.
Pin all of your pleats into place. Steam press the pleats, unpin the pins and sew all of your pleat edges with a 1/4 inch edgestitch. Pin all of the pleats back into place. Now topstitch the pleats down. Have fun here, you can sew a very nice long rectangle on top of a large pleat to keep it in place, and a narrower rectangle on the smaller pleat. You will want to leave the pleats open roughly 8" from the bottom hem.
Turn the shirt over so that the wrong side is up. You will have extra fabric left along the topstitching that is holding down the pleats. The sleeve stubs will be creating a lot of bulk. Carefully cut away as much of this extra fabric as you can.
Turn the shirt over on your table so that the right side is facing you again. Decide how much of a waist band you would like by folding over the fabric. I made a pocket hem much like making a curtain pocket, so that I could put a man's belt through the waist hempocket to hold up the kilt, by belting the belt in the back.
Here you can see the man's belt threaded through the waistband hem pocket. I had a lot of trouble with my camera, it did not want to take a picture of the kilt and the sporran pocket at the same time.
Decide on the kilt length and fold up the hem and steam press into place with stitchwitch.
Stay tuned for a pattern for the sporran pocket and additional drawings for how to cut the shirt in the next few days.
Attention Readers You Can Find the Sporran Pocket Pattern & Instructions Here!
P.S. I would love to see some of the Kitchen Kilts that have been sewn up, so if you are busy making one please send me a picture - I would love to show off your Kilt!
The Saga of the Pocket Pattern
Making a pdf file is turning out to be more of a challenge around here than I thought. In the next day or two I should have a pdf of the sporran pocket pattern so that I can post it. The sporran pocket I made for this Kilt is actually a little too large, so the pattern I will be posting will be sized a bit smaller so that it fits the finished kilt better.
