Kilt Progress: Putting in the Guts

Inside of a kilt, showing stabilizer

Kilt progress: I put in the strip of fabric that serves as a stabilizer for the waist. Seriously, it is just a scrap of cotton. I don’t know why it needs to be sewn using an X pattern of stitches. That’s what I was trained to do, so that’s what I do. And it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the puzzle of making the Xs without having to overstitch spots, so I have to do it to show off.

There’s a lot that goes into the guts of the kilt. If you look below the gold-colored stripe under the pleat cut outs, you’ll see a line of stitching called steeking. It reinforces the bottom of the pleats. More guts to come!

Page 117

Can you judge a book from reading a single page? I moderated a fun panel at Minicon. The panelists were randomly given books with the covers concealed. They each took a turn reading page 117 from their mystery book. Then the panelists and the audience speculated what the book was about. We voted if we would read the rest of the book based on that single page. Amazingly, a few people (with great memories) could identify a couple of the titles from just those few words. Afterward I was curious to read page 117 of my own books.