Pleats is one of the most versatile styles we love. However, drafting pleats can be daunting and rather mathematically involved. Here's how we overcome it.
I get lots of requests to draft pleats when I teach my classes. This versatile style can be seen in many of our garments, from skirts, pants to shirts and blouses. It can basically be used anywhere with beautiful results, if one considers properly on its size, placement and type of fabric to create that pleat.
What is a Pleat?
A pleat is simply a deliberate fold (as opposed to gathers, which are random in nature) in which to give fullness to the hem and of course, create an interesting design in the garment. (A small, narrow pleat is known as a tuck, and that is usually used in shirts and blouses.)
Today, we are going to focus on the application of pleats to skirts.
In terms of skirt styles, a pleated skirt requires more technical calculation and precise sewing than say, a gathered skirt. Hence, it is not the first styles I would recommend for total beginners to attempt.
It is, however, not impossible to make a simple pleated skirt with minimum mathematics and basic sewing skills. Let's start from the fundamentals.
Make Up of a Pleat
There is two main parts to a pleat, namely the visible outer fold or spacing (x), and the hidden underlay (2*y).
Make Up of a Pleat
A pleat could be a full depth pleat or a shallow one. If you refer to the figure on the left, for a full depth pleat, x = y. In a shallow pleat, y is smaller than x.
In pleat shaping, we could have a straight pleat, which has the same width, or x, throughout its length. Conversely, a shaped pleat does not have the same width traversing down the length of the skirt. Instead, it could be narrower (typically) at the top (or waist) and wider at the bottom (or hem).
Straight pleats are usually used for slightly shaped skirts; for more shapely skirts, we could use shaped pleats to better complement the silhouette.
Types of Pleats
There are three types of pleats, namely knife pleat, box pleat and inverted pleat.
Types of Pleats
As you can see, knife pleats face the same direction all round. The box pleat has its folds meeting on the wrong side of the skirt, whereas the inverted pleat has the folds meeting on the right side of the skirt.
So a box pleat is essentially the inverse of an inverted pleat. In terms of pattern making, symbols are included to indicate how the fabric should be folded in order to obtain the desired pleat effect. The figure above shows the corresponding symbols typically used for each pleat. You may come across a different notation but its function remains the same.
Yardage Consumption
A pleated skirt can be quite wide at the hem, and as with all full skirts, it could use up quite a bit of yardage. We can show this by using the classic style: accordion pleated skirt.
Accordion Pleats in a Massimo Tutti Skirt
The accordion pleated skirt is made up of knife pleats all round; they could be straight through to the hem or shaped (the latter is sometimes known as sunburst pleated skirt).
For the example on yardage consumption, let's assume straight knife pleats all round, and that they are at full depth.
So the fabric yardage needed is:
Fabric needed for each pleat * number of pleats in the skirt = (x + 2y) * (waist circumference/x) = 3 waist circumference
Tada! So for future fabric shopping, you can make a quick estimate of the yardage you need to make a pleated skirt. Of course, this is only an approximation. In the case where directional fabric is used, the yardage can be higher; of course, you could choose to have shallower pleats to optimise fabric usage. However, do keep in mind that the final drape and look of the skirt might change with such alteration to the pleats.
Fabrication
Practically any fabric can be used for pleating. Depending on the fiber content, some pleats can hold their creases permanently. If that's the look you are aiming for, the fabric needs to contain some percentage of synthetic fiber, like polyester. Fabric of pure natural fiber would be unable to retain the creases after washing.
A Note on Pressing of Pleats
In order to avoid getting shadows or imprints of the pleats onto the right side of the fabric, a piece of cardboard can be slipped in between the pleats before pressing.
Commercial Pleating
Other than pleating by hand, you could choose to purchase pleated fabric right off the shelf, or better yet, pleat your own! Locally, you could go to Bewarp Design Studio for pleating services. You could even bring in your own fabric for pleating, so do consult the team on your design and fabrication to better achieve your desired outcome. Internationally, I'm pretty awed by Tom’s Sons International Pleating in terms of the range of pleating available. If you are interested in dwelling deeper into the technicalities of commercial pleating, they have published a book Pleating: Fundamentals for Fashion Design. This book can be found at our local library (ISBN: 9780764352966).
Now with all this information, we are ready to draft!
A Basic Pleated Skirt
So now, armed with some knowledge of how pleat works, we can start drafting our first pleated skirt! We will start with an accordion pleated skirt using full depth pleats. In fact, this basic pleat skirt is pretty straightforward that requires minimum drafting; you could even chalk the skirt directly onto your fabric!
This skirt is essentially a rectangle, with its width the desired skirt length and the width 3 times the waist circumference.
You can now decide how many pleats you would like to have around be the waist. I recommend to work in whole numbers as much as possible, to simplify your calculations.
So, let’s say I'm making this skirt for a 68cm waist circumference. We will need about 4 - 6cm ease to accommodate movement as well as fabric bulk from the pleats. Let's work with 72cm finished waist circumference. I could work with a 4cm spacing for each pleat, which would give me 18 pleats around the skirt. Or I could do 36 pleats that are 2cm wide. The choice depends on the desired look, the fabric type and the amount of time and effort we can afford on the project. (The closest in imperial units is a 28” waist circumference accommodating 18 pleats at about 1.5” wide each)
For illustration here, I will choose 18 pleats at 4cm wide each (or 18 pleats at 1.5” wide each). Let's assume we are going to draft on paper before committing to fabric. We will draw the rectangle, with its height the desired skirt length and length 3 times the waist circumference. From the left edge of the rectangle, mark every 4cm (1.5”) interval, all the way to the right edge. Indicate how the knife pleats are formed by using the symbols discussed above. See the above figure for the finished skirt block.
Fabric Layout
With the skirt block, we can now plan how to cut the fabric. Due to the length involved (3 * waist circumference), we usually need to align this edge along the selvedge of the fabric and cut the skirt on the crossgrain. If we are using a border print fabric, this layout works out beautifully. We can also get away with no side seams in this layout; there’s only a centre back seam where we will insert our zipper.
Simplest Fabric Layout for Pleated Skirt
Design Evaluation
At this point, we do have to make a note about the fit of this basic pleated skirt. Since the skirt is a simple shape of a rectangle, we can expect that it will not follow the body contours very closely, especially at the curvature of our waist and our hips.
Curve of the Waist
Our waist is actually a slight curve, with its lowest point at centre back, curving up at the sides and then dipping gently at centre front. With a rectangle, we have lost this waist shaping. It is something quite minor but it could make a difference in the fit.
As with any project, how much detail and precision we would like to pursue is in proportion to the time and effort we could and want to put into the project. Oftentimes, I find myself adopting simpler designs - where the loss in detail or fit is still deemed acceptable - so that I could produce something quickly and efficiently.
Fit Over the Hips
Here we have taken no consideration of the fit of this skirt over the hips. At full depth pleats, we have 3 times the waist circumference of fabric around our body by the time it reaches our hips. This should be more than sufficient to flow over our hips nicely. Suffice to say, we would not be able to stitch our pleats close like what you see in some skirts; the pleats have to be able to open up from the waist down to provide room at the hips.
If you choose to use shallower pleats, we need to check and make sure the width of the skirt at hip level is more than our body measurement.
Alternatively, we could use hip circumference to determine how wide our basic pleated skirt block needs to be, but we would then require some way to make sure we can fit the waist.
A Better Pleated Skirt
We can improve the fit of our basic skirt. To tackle the two fit issues we have identified, we would now need to do minor adjustments to our rectangle block.
First, we need to know some dimensions. For illustration, we will continue with a 72cm (28”) finished waist circumference as we have mentioned previously.
For the hips, we will work with a body measurement of a 90cm (35”) circumference. With this hip measurement, we need to include 4 - 6cm ease to accommodate for movement and fabric bulk from the pleats. Let's work with a 96cm finished hip circumference.
Lastly, let's set they desired skirt length at 56cm (22”), which is about knee length for a 1.6m (5’3”) tall person.
We can now decide on the number of pleats and each pleat size. Let's do 24 pleats with each pleat size, or spacing of 4cm (1.5”). Since this time we have an even number of pleats, we can easily work with half instead of full blocks. That will give us 12 pleats for half the body.
We will draw a rectangle block that is ½ hip circumference along its length and desired skirt length for its height. Mark a vertical line halfway from the vertical edge. This is the side seam. Mark out 12 equal intervals.
Drafting Half Pattern of 12 Pleats
We then adjust the waist curve by lowering 1-1.5cm (⅝”) at the centre back and increase by 0.7cm (¼”) at the side seam.
Now we need to fit the waist.
Difference between Waist and Hips = 96cm - 72cm = 24cm (35” - 28” = 7”) for whole body, or 12cm (4.75”) for half a body.
To distribute the difference evenly among the 12 pleats, each pleat will take in 12cm / 12 = 1cm dart each. (In imperial units, it's 4.75” / 12 = ⅜” dart for each pleat)
Drafting Darts at Every Pleat
You can see the above figure on how to establish the depth of the pleats. Each individual pleat would have to be sewn down to this point in the skirt construction.
Prepare a fresh sheet of drafting paper that's 1.5 x hip circumference in length and desired skirt length in height. For my skirt, that's a 144cm x 56cm sheet.
Rule in a vertical line 4cm (1.5”) away from the left edge of the paper. Paste segment 1 against this line. Rule a second line 2 x 4cm (3”) away from segment 1. Paste segment 2 against this second line, making sure the hip lines are all aligned. Repeat this sequence until all 12 segments are secured. Rule in the last line 3cm (1.5”) to the right of the last segment.
This is now the improved pleated skirt block that you can use for fabric layout and cutting. The pleats can now be sewn down to the respective dots as shown in the half skirt block above.
Design Evaluation
This improved pleated skirt block definitely takes more time to set up but the fit is much better, especially over the hips. The pleated skirt blocks here have used full pleats, where underlay is decided to be as deep as the overlay. This requires a lot of fabric and sometimes, we do not yield good utility of the fabric we have on hand unless we allow for more seams in the skirt.
Fabric Usage Optimisation
To optimise fabric usage, we can take the width of our fabric into account and derive the underlay instead. Let's work with a 60" wide fabric, or 150cm.
Still using a finish hip circumference of 96cm, let's assume we have a 4cm tall waistband
The total underlay available to us is
= 2*[150cm - (0.5*Total Overlay) - (Waistband Height) - (Seam Allowance)]
= 2*[150cm - (0.5*96cm) - 4cm - 4cm]
= 188cm
If we divide the available total underlay over 24 pleats evenly, we can have no more than 7.83cm for the underlay of each pleat. For instance, we could choose to work with 7cm underlay for every 4cm overlay, or spacing. As we can see, this is not a full pleat; but it's quite a close one and has the added advantage of fully utilising the width of the fabric.
Finally, we have been talking about knife pleats so far. but the blocks discussed here can most definitely be used for box and inverted pleats, or even a mix of pleats.
Last Words
Pleats are truly versatile when we want to create interesting features in our garments. With a bit of mathematics, we can make pleats garments that are not only beautiful but well fitted. Be inspired!
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