Cleaning your kilt

Seaforth Highlanders escorting Prisoners after the battle of Cambrai, 1916

Spots or stains on your kilt should be dealt with as follows:

Take a clean face-cloth and wet it with tepid (i.e. about body-temperature) water. Wring it out and dab it in a bit of unscented hand soap – ‘Ivory’ is my preference –and then rub gently at the stain. Repeat as necessary.

Pressing your kilt

Important Note!
Wool is generally regarded as being very difficult to press.

On the other hand, I taught myself when I was a 15-year-old cadet (I was pressing Battledress, which gives you some idea of how long ago that was) and I never had any problems.

You will only learn how to do it correctly by doing it yourself. Read the following instructions before ironing your kilt. Keep a mirror handy so if you bugger it up you can see who to blame.

If you’ve rolled up your kilt as I suggested, chances are you will rarely if ever need to iron your kilt. If you do need to, say because the pleat – creases are no longer straight or because your preferred method of kilt-storage is in a ball under your bed, then here’s the drill;

• An iron (make sure the pressing surface is clean and that if the iron has been left sitting with water in it that the water hasn’t become rusty) Drain the water out of the iron and never fill it again. The water just absorbs heat that would be more profitably used in pressing your kilt.
• A STURDY surface to iron on – preferably a wooden table. If it’s a good table, cut a piece of corrugated cardboard to lay on it and protect the finish. My second choice would be the floor.
• A wool blanket. If you are or have been in the Army, we both know that you have at least one “‘Blanket, grey woolen, soldiers, for the use of” kicking about the house somewhere.
• A ‘pressing cloth’, which is simply a one-foot by two-foot piece of white cotton flannel, and
• A spray bottle full of clean cold water.  

1. Plug in your iron and put it on the ‘wool’ setting.
2. Cover the tabletop with the wool blanket folded in half (making two thicknesses of wool, for the brain-impaired).
3. Lay your kilt on the blanket as you would if you were going to roll it up. Adjust the pleats as required so that everything is in the correct alignment.
4. Spritz water generously on the left-hand pleat. Dip the pressing-cloth in water, wring it out and place it flat on the area to be pressed.
5. The two things to avoid are Dreaded Shine which is caused (I think) by the surface of the wool glazing under the heat or the iron, and Burning the wool. Both of these can be avoided by:
   – dampening the wool before ironing, and
   – keeping your iron moving
6. Run your iron over the crease. You can push down as hard if you want, but it’s not all that necessary. When the steam ceases to rise it’s time to lift your iron.
7. Re-wet your pressing cloth, spritz the next pleat to the right, and repeat.
8. If you have to correct a crease: spritz the crease well. Hold the iron in your left hand and start ironing from the fell (stitching) to the hem. With your right hand, adjust the pleat so that the desired crease is at the fold of the pleat. Be careful to keep the iron moving as you don’t have the pressing-cloth to protect the wool.
9. After you have finished, leave the kilt out to air until it is THOROUGHLY dry, then roll up and store as before.

Sending your kilt out to be pressed:
If your creases have vanished entirely or you intend to send the kilt out to be pressed, then you must ‘baste’ the pleats and other creases.

To ‘Baste’ a pleat is simply to temporarily tack it in position with a needle and cheap white 100% cotton thread. A basted kilt can be pressed on one side and then flipped over to press the other side in the full confidence that the pleats are held perfectly in place. Basting the pleats beforehand is the only way to ensure that the job will be done how you want it. Specify that the kilt needs a ‘First press’, and ask them to wrap it up flat, NOT hang it on a coat hanger. The only cleaner worth dealing with is one who does all the work on the premises. If the work has to be sent out, then whatever instructions you give won’t reach or will be ignored by whatever wage-slave is running the steam table.