Making a baby kilt

It was Lorna's wedding this weekend and she had kindly decided that as Noah needed a kilt that I would make one for him, Yay. I did a deal of searching online for a helpful tutorial or anything that might give me a clue on how to make a baby kilt to absolutely no avail :( In the end I resorted to getting my husbands kilt out and laying it out across the floor to have a good look at how it was all sewn together.

The fabric we got from our local fabric shop, in theory it should have been made from proper tartan but it would have been far too heavy for Noah to comfortably wear all day and also too expensive too but there are plenty of cheaper, lighter weight alternatives out there that still give the look you would want for a kilt. Lorna wanted a grey colour as that's what Daddy and Grandad would be wearing on the day and we found some no problem at all.

The hardest bit was deciding what length of material I would need to make it fit around Noah's waist once all the pleats were in. I ended up just sort of hoping that the width of the fabric would be enough and then measured how long we needed it to be. A kilt at the correct length should just sit on the floor when you kneel down in it, hmm good theory but try get an 11 month old baby to kneel on the floor whilst you hold up some material to get the right length, not very easy hehe, so I ended up cutting the fabric much longer than I needed so that I could adjust the length once all the pleats were in and this turned out to be a really easy way of doing it :)

The tartan we had chosen was really easy to match the pattern up when folding the pleats and I folded and pinned each one in place and then hand sewed them all in place both front and back so that you couldn't see any of the stitching just as it would have been on a proper kilt. It was time consuming but I actually really enjoyed doing it. Once all the pleats were in we tried it on Noah a few times until we were happy we had the correct length then trimmed and turned over the waist band and added the finishing touches of a frayed edge to the front and the little buckles.

I think it turned out really well, Lorna bought him a little wasitcoat, kilt shoes and a sporran to go with it and Noah looked so cute on the day. Can you see his little cravat that I modified out of one of the adults ones to make it match in with all the wedding parties ties and his wee flashes made from ribbon :)