- I really wasn't interested in kilt making per se.

(playful music) I just really loved the Scottish culture.

And then I went to Scotland and did a kilt making workshop.

I absolutely fell in love with it.

Everybody needs to go to Scotland.

(rocking bagpipe music) My name is Sheila Tabaka.

I'm the costume designer in the theater program at the university at Southwest Minnesota State University.

And so, I design and make the costumes for all of our theater productions.

And so, being a kilt maker is not really too far off from what I already do.

(playful music continues) I did some investigation online and I found a few kilt making classes that were taking place in Scotland, when I was gonna be on sabbatical.

And I applied to one at the Kiltmakery outside of Edinburgh, and so that's the class I went to.

I've had a lot of people saying, "So are you gonna do a show where you need kilts?"

And, well there's "Brigadoon."

(Sheila laughing) You know, there's not a whole lot of shows where you'd be making, you know, a lot of kilts, but you know, whatever.

I mean, I'm excited to see where it all leads.

So, there's a website called Heritage Crafts outta the UK, and they have a listing of all the endangered crafts in the UK.

And so, there are things like tinsmithing on there, things like cricket ball making, by hand.

And one of the endangered crafts is kilt making, which sounds really strange, in Scotland, that it'd be an endangered craft, but it is.

And so, the Kiltmakery is very interested in continuing that tradition.

And one of the ways you become a kilt maker is that you have to take an apprenticeship.

And so that's what the Kiltmakery does.

It's a two week intensive.

And you go in basically with nothing, knowing nothing at all.

The people that were in the class with me, we all are seamstresses or tailors in some way, but not for kilts.

So we go through the whole process.

We build a kilt while we're there, and then we can transfer those skills.

Every kilt you make is the same, it's just the measurements are all different.

(playful music ending) So one of the things that we did at the Kiltmakery, (light music) is before we even started anything with making the kilts, is we talked about the history of the kilts.

And it's really kind of simple.

Basically, there weren't any.

(light music stopping) It's not like if there's this big long history of the McLeods and the Buchanans, and things like that.

There was a big festival going on, and there were a couple of brothers who thought that they could make a buck.

And so, (light music) they decided to go into this tartan making business.

So all these families just picked, something that they liked.

So the tartan is really the print.

So this tartan is called a Copper Haze, one of those, kind of designer tartans.

It's not tied to any... You know, it's not the McAllisters or the McDougalls or anything like that, it's just a tartan.

You can make them out of different kinds of things.

They can be made out of polyester, they can be made out of wool.

Most of the time they're made out of wool.

And the traditional historical ones, they would've been made out of wool.

Kilts started out as functional clothing.

It was really used as something that was utilitarian because you could use it as clothing but you could also use it as a blanket.

You could even use it as a tent if you needed to.

Today, what I'm gonna show you, is I'm gonna rip the wool, and then I'll start talking about how to pleat different kinds of tartans.

One of the first things you need to do when you make a kilt, is you need to decide how long it's going to be.

And there are definitely rules on how long a kilt is.

If it's above your knee, you are a boy.

If it is below your knee, you're wrong.

And if it's at your knee, it's at the right spot.

And so, once you have that measured out, then you have to rip the fabric.

And if it's a wool, you can snip it and rip it.

And so, I've already snipped it here, and then, it'll just rip right on its line, (fabric tearing) right there, it'll be perfect, when I start to put it together.

If you have about eight yards, each kilt takes about eight yards, then you can start pleating it up.

The front of the kilt is a straight flap, and underneath it is... And that's called the apron.

And the under-apron is also straight, and then everything else is pleated into the back.

And you have to take the measurement from the waist to the hip.

You have to take that measurement when you make your pleat.

Most of the time it's about eight inches, but if somebody's got a really long backside or something like that, maybe it's gonna be a 10-inch rise that you're gonna have.

Or fall, it's called a fall.

Hmm, fifteen.

That's my front of my apron, and this is all gonna be the back of the apron.

And so I have to pleat it up.

And if you look at this particular tartan, it's all symmetrical.

(Sheila clearing throat) And so, you can either pleat to the line, which means you have all these lines going down, or you can pleat to the set.

Do you want me to show you on this one?

So on this kilt, you can see that this is the apron in the front.

And then, if you lay out the back, you can see it's the same design here as here.

If you look at just that and that, it looks the same, but this is all pleating.

So their inside here, are these huge pleats, that are able to be kicked up while you're dancing, or for all your movement.

(rocking bagpipe music) And then we've got, these are the size of the pleats.

So this goes to here.

And then this goes there.

So you can see, all of my pleats are the same size as my pleat marker here.

The other thing you get with a kilt like this is you get human error.

And so you can see where people have left a stitch.

It's kind of like looking at vintage garments, you know, before we had, you know, sewing machines.

Before that, you could see where people would make a mistake or they would miss a stitch or the stitch would be too long or something like that, because hands are actually making the garment.

The Kiltmakery teaches you (playful music) how to make a kilt the traditional way, the historical, traditional way, which is through hand-sewing.

So everything on the kilt is hand-sewn.

And I have really wonderful memories of sitting with these five other seamstresses and myself hand-sewing.

And hand sewing's a really lovely kind of communal thing to do because you can chat while you're doing it.

And as long as you've got everything marked out, you don't have to keep relying and re-measuring and things like that.

And just talking, just having a chat.

I mean, that group of people, I tell you, two weeks.

(Sheila scoffing) You think two weeks, I mean, and it's like they're part of you, you know?

How can that happen in two weeks?

I don't know.

But it was really, it was really great.

I think the idea of technology creeping into handcraft things is really, really dangerous.

That idea of touching something and creating something, and the communal aspect of being together and making something is really...

I mean that's one of the reasons that I do theater, live theater, you can't do it by yourself.

You have to have other people and you have to do it.

You can't sit in front of a box and do it.

You have to, it has to be with other people.

On the in-structure, inside structure, there's horse hair to kind of keep it in place, and then there's a lining.

And you can do lots of different kinds of things with that because nobody's gonna see it except for you.

It's made me wanna be an actual kilt maker.

And I've made two, I made one while I was at the workshop for my son, and I made another one after the workshop just to keep those ideas and the process, you know, in my head.

And I fell in love with it.

And I really, really love it.

I really love doing it.

Don't you love it?

I love it so much.

(videographer laughing) (Sheila laughing) - [Videographer] It's pretty cool.

- It is pretty cool.

(rocking bagpipe music)