Burns Supper!

Burns Night is January 25th, to mark the birthday of Rabbie Burns (famous Scottish poet, of Auld Lang Syne fame, don’t you know!). Celebrating it has become a bit sporadic since I moved back from Scotland. But here’s a picture of my friends and I at the Ceilidh to celebrate the St. Andrew’s Society Charity Gala to put you in the mood for the day!

Featuring the Hamilton hunting tartan, and the MacPherson Ancient Red tartans.

Must go and find some good haggis to eat now…..

St. Andrew's Society, and discount

Starting a business is always challenging, particularly when you return from away and are trying to get things up and running from a stand still. Four years ago, I returned to Toronto from the UK with the intention of establishing my artist practice in jewellery, and kiltmaking. I had a plan (because I can only split my attention so many ways at once!): I’d concentrate on getting one side set up, and then work on the other. Serendipity ended up dictating that jewellery got the lionshare of my attention first!

Fast forward to 2020, and the new year, which included plans to start trying to develop the kiltmaking aspect of my business more. Well, we all know what happened then…..and, like alot of people, I fell into abit of a covid black hole. Fast forward again, and here we are moving toward the end of 2022. Amongst the activities I’ve done this year, is to joing the St. Andrew’s Society of Toronto. Apart from conncecting with people of Scottish descent, they have a charitable aspect that I admire, and hope to become more involved with in the future.

In the meantime, I’m happy to announce that I am partnering with the St. Andrew’s Society of Toronto to offer it’s members a 10% discount off my products and services. Keep your ears up for exciting news about this in the next few weeks!

And….if you love all things Scottish, I recommend visiting the society’s website, as they have a pretty exciting calendar of social events! Hope to see you at some of them:).

-Robin

How I became a kiltmaker

You might not have discovered this about me yet, but I love to sew! When I started doing custom jewellery shows (just pre-covid, sadly), I decided I needed some textile additions to my show display. And so I made these two mini quilts:

When I was thinking about moving back to Toronto, and what I was going to do with my career, I started thinking about my love of sewing, and how I might make some aspect of that into my business. While I love to quilt, I didn’t want it to become work!

Around that time, I reconnected with a friend in Edinburgh that happens to be a kiltmaker. We were chatting, and she happened to mention that they were starting up a kiltmakers academy to train the next generation of kiltmakers. You see, the art of traditional, handmade kilts was being lost, as knowledge was being lost or degraded over time. So, the idea was to develop a program that was a professional, technical designation, and bring some consistency of making to the craft again.

I love to hand sew, and there are a lot of Scots in Canada! So, I thought this might be useful . So, I spent 4 months of intensive Saturdays learning to make kilts on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

Here are a few examples of the kilts I made as part of the course. I had to complete a total of six kilts to graduate, including a child’s kilt, a military box pleat, an asymmetric tartan, a heavy weight tartan and a plain cloth kilt. In addition, I had to learn how to do alterations. It was a great course, and gave me a baptism by fire of most aspects of kiltmaking. I know about making pipers’ kilts and dancer kilts as well, although I didn’t have to make one to complete the course.

I feel very prepared to embark on my new journey as a traditional Scottish Kiltmaker!

Looking for an heirloom quality kilt? Or to have that kilt you grandparent handed down to you? Contact me for more information, and let’s talk!