Fun Video

A little after we started up on Etsy, there was a competition for new businesses on Instructables.com The winners got quite a lot of money to help get their business going and we figured - why not? It helped motivate me to do a bit more than just the little baby kilts so I got a bustle kilt made (I'll do a whole post about my bustle kilt later, I promise) and I made up some designs to show what we hope to be able to make in the future. The competition called for a video but it could only be 1 minute. Yep, ONE MINUTE ONLY! Kind of crazy, but we were up for the challenge. We didn't win the competition but I'm glad we made the video. You can check it all out at the Krazy Kilts Instructable Post and read about our vision ;)

Or you can watch it here

How it all started

So you want to know how we came up with the krazy idea for making a company where we sell krazy kilts? Well, we'll have to go way, way, waaaay back to a time long ago. ;) My husband has always liked kilts. He has a wee bit of Scottish blood in him but he's always loved history and learning about other cultures and there's just always been something about kilts that he thought was cool. So he would scour the skirt racks at thrift stores (I'm sure this had to have looked crazy, a 98 lb 6 feet tall teenage boy looking at women's skirts) But his persistence (and ability of not caring what people think of him) helped him to find a few kilts that were tucked away and were even wool and fit him. He also found out about great kilts, the kind where you just have a big stretch of fabric that's not sewn and you hand pleat it each time you wear it. So it was that he looked like this when I met him. Isn't he handsome?!

And so we dated, yadda yadda, three years after we met we got married. (Ok, so some people wouldn't blink an eye at that but I do have to interject that this is a big deal as we met and were dating at BYU, a university known for its "Mrs." degrees and engagements after 3 weeks of dating, but I digress) So my handsome husband wore a kilt for our wedding!  I should mention here that we met in the Quill and the Sword, the medieval club at BYU and medieval reenactment through that as well as the Society of Creative Anachronism, (SCA) along with Scottish festivals, Ren Faires and the like are just part of who we are and what we do.

 By this time I had procured a copy of the most amazing Kilt Making Book ever, "Art of Kilt Making" by Barbara Tewksbury and Elsie Stuehmeyer. Well, actually I had gotten it as a present for my handsome husband. This book taught me more about kilts then every website I had scoured over. It also scared me to death as I felt I could never make a kilt the "correct" way, for you see, a proper kilt is fitted such that the pleats are not straight. It's hard to believe but the pleats actually taper in and out so as to fit snug at the waist where traditional kilts are worn. So I set the book aside and didn't worry about it to much other than the hour long conversations my handsome husband and I would have on the topic of kilts and their construction.

With the passing of a few years we have a daughter and a baby boy. For the boy I wanted him to have a unique christening outfit, so I endeavored to make my first true kilt. But then I had a revelation - since he was so small with such a big round tummy, there wasn't a need to taper the pleats and straight pleats would work so I could sew it on the machine and not have to do it all by hand. The teeny tiny pleats were a bit daunting and I had my first taste of plaid and a sewing machine - I learned that you can not pin your work but must simply hold it together and most importantly you have to offset the lines as the sewing machine presser foot pushes the fabric as it sews and if your lines match up when you start they will skew after you sew. But it was a true labor of love and still one of my favorites that I've ever made.


Then, a few years later, through the benefits of marriage, parenthood, and old age, my husband outgrew his kilts and was in need of another.   So I tapped into my hippie muse and took a tie dye sheet we had and made him a kilt. (Now I had made him one before we had gotten the book on how to make kilts, it was for a bad garb contest at an SCA event and it sat wrong and was pretty awful) This kilt however worked out wonderfully and many people have admired it when he's worn it to Scottish festivals and the like.

I chose to start the kilt at the hips instead of the waist as that's where my husband felt most comfortable wearing them and this made it possible to have the pleats be straight, just like the baby kilt I had made, which meant it could be done on the sewing machine but still look and fit great! I took what I had figured out and made a new kilt for our boy who had grown up a bit by this time.

I made a few baby kilts as presents but when lots of people starting saying they would be willing to pay for some of our krazy stuff we thought "Why not?" So with a little ingenuity and husband rearing for even a small start of a business, I put together a few baby kilts and we opened an Etsy shop!We opened it in Aug. of 2012 and while we had big plans a few things in life became bigger - like the holidays and what not - but with luck we'll get more things made and have fun doing it too.