How To Clean A Kilt At Home

kilt care and maintenance 1 With intendance, your kilt will last a very long fourth dimension indeed.

Carefully packed away in my cedar breast lies my grandpa'due south kilt from the Boer War. The lining has been replaced at least twice and I couldn't tell you how many leather straps information technology's gone through. I would wearable it withal were it not for the effect that age has had on me – they don't call it "centre age" for aught!

72nd Regiment, Seaforth Highlanders of Canada on maneuvers on the Plains of Abraham, 1912

Your kilt can terminal virtually indefinitely as long as the tartan cloth itself is not harmed. A kilt volition take an incredible amount of corruption. We participate in Highland Games and fight wars in them, remember?

Here's how to properly take care of it.

Your kilts' great enemies are; Moths, trigger-happy and burns, chemical damage and rot. Let'south examine each of these threats:

ROT: Your kilt is made from all natural fabrics. Mildew will occur if yous don't allow it to thoroughly dry out before putting it away.

After having worn your kilt for even so long, lay it out overnight with the lining facing upwardly. This volition allow the sweat and whatever else to evaporate from the lining.

Don't EVER put it away until it is thoroughly dry out.

All I can say about Trigger-happy or called-for your kilt with a cigarette butt is "Don't do it".

The beginning of the end – kilt-pin holes are not easy to repair.

Kilt pins are the number one crusade of irreparable damage to kilts. The forepart frock suffers a little bit of damage every time the pivot is pushed through the textile. Somewhen the apron has two ragged holes which no power on earth can repair. If y'all feel that you MUST wear a kilt pivot, mount it carefully by working the tip of the pivot gently through the material and leave it there.

I've been dealing with this sort of repair since my first twenty-four hours equally a 'prentice boy. I Can darn and repair holes in your kilt, and I'thou probably the all-time/the but one to do and so, but the repair won't be invisible.

Chemical Damage: Just dry-make clean your kilt as an absolute last resort! Each time a kilt is immersed in the nasty volatile dry-cleaning solvents, a petty scrap more of the wool's natural oils are lost.

If you MUST accept your kilt to a dry-cleaner, observe a shop that does the piece of work on the premises and and then (politely) ask to speak to the person who volition exist working on your kilt. You want them to clean it but NOT to press it. There isn't a cleaner in N America whom I would trust to correctly press a kilt (or, for that matter, a suit-jacket)

Moths: I hate 'em! I've been known to hunt a wool-moth all through the business firm, knocking over lamps every bit I swing a paper at the lilliputian bastard in a berserker fury.

1456919_10152529761662203_2090750091_n

The owner put his kilt away in late December. This is what he found when he next looked at his kilt in the following September!

The owner put his kilt away in belatedly December. This is what he establish when he next looked at his kilt in the post-obit September!

My parent's business firm had a 'clamber-space' with an old wool carpeting laid over the physical to save our knees as we boys scurried around in the darkness, playing at coal-miners.

I remember in one case when I thought the texture of the sometime rug was oddly different. The next thing I knew, my right hand felt some greasy, writhing matter and and then skidded out from under me. When I fetched a light, I plant to my disgusted fascination that the entire rug was a huge wool-moth plant nursery – the entire surface was a mass of larvae.

I oasis't been the aforementioned since.

The wool-moth has the usual four-stage life bicycle: Egg, larvae, pupa and developed. The larvae is what does all the damage.

Brand a addiction of periodically examining your kilt for eggs, larvae and pupa. The adult female can only lay her eggs where she can crawl to and the other iii stages don't motility much more than an inch from where the egg was laid.

They are balky to light and so seek the dark spaces in your kilt. Become through each pleat and brush out Whatsoever lint that yous find. The egg will be difficult to see, but the larvae and pupa will await like little elongated lint-balls, and go 'squish' when y'all squeeze them. They're also 65% protein by volume, so 'come the Zombie Apocalypse'…..

You tin kill them by steam-pressing your kilt (more on that afterward) and I'm told that sunlight can mess them upwardly also – leaving your kilt out in the summer lord's day MIGHT do the play tricks. Mothballs* and cedar shavings repel them. Newspaper worked in the old days, but the printers don't use the same aromatic solvents today.

*I've recently been told that a) Mothballs are carcinogenic and b) if they're stiff enough to hurt moths, they're strong enough to injure you. Stick with cedar and regular inspections!