Matching Plaids

The thought of matching plaids strikes fear into the hearts of many
sewers, but it is really not that hard to do.

Over the holidays, I had to quickly replace my families Christmas
stockings because someone, who shall remain nameless, decided
while packing up last year, that it was time to throw them out.
That didn't go over too well.

Well, I had to find something to use, and thanks to my remanent
addiction, had a bunch of cotton flannel plaid pieces that would
work. I needed 6, and I found 6. I used muslin for the linings,
and channel quilted the flannel to the muslin along the prominent
stripes. I found a nice piece in dark red and dark green fabric to
use for the cuffs, which I have not shown here, because I need
to rework them before I'm willing to photograph them.

Here is a very easy way to match plaids:

Open out your fabric flat. 

 

Lay out your pattern, being sure to
leave room to cut the second piece,
reversed, and matching (this will be
discussed later).

Weight or pin, and cut out the first
piece.


Remove the pattern and mark the
right side (a safety pin works well.)





(I cut out 6 different fabrics, so the fabrics in the photos will
change, depending on what I photographed in which fabric!)




Lay the remaining fabric out
flat, and lay the cutout piece
right-side down on the face
up fabric.





Move the cutout around until the plaid matches at the cut edges
all around the perimeter.


(The cutout piece and the fabric are now right sides together and
will produce a mirrored pair. One of the best things about a
woven plaid is that if you forget to flip it over, it doesn't matter,
both sides are the same!)

This is an EVEN plaid. The pattern
and the spacing are the same to the
left and right along the same grain,
either the lengthwise or the crosswise,
but the different grains don't have to
match.
 
Can you see the edge of the cutout
piece on top?

How about now?

If the lines in the plaid do not match
up between the pieces, rotate the cut
out piece until they do.







When you are happy with the way it matches, pin or weight the
cutout piece to the fabric and cut out. The best part about woven
plaids is that you don't have to check the grain; it is already lined
up perfectly! 


If the lines only match up in one direction, then you have an
UNEVEN plaid, and you have to lay things out  in a different way.

This layout would have
worked if I had flipped the
toe to the other side, where
the fabric is longer. I wish I
had seen that before! You
need to plan how you will cut
both pieces before you cut the
first piece. When I cut these, I
didn't pay attention to the
direction the second piece would have to be placed to be cut out.




The only way I could cut this
Green/Red/Black/White plaid
was to line up the extremes of
dark and light. That doesn't
look too bad. At least it
doesn't jump out at you. The
smaller red and white lines do
not connect, but they do match with each other.


Another way a plaid can be UNEVEN is by a change in size of a
matching stripe pattern between lengthwise and crosswise grain.
Even though it looks the same, it will not match up. You can tell
if it will match up or not  by folding one corner of the fabric back
against itself at a 45 degree.

On this Blue/Gray UNEVEN plaid, I
could not lay the second cut in the
same direction as the first. If I wanted
to piece the heel or toe, or put patches
on them, this would have worked, but
I wasn't planning to go that way.





Turning it crosswise would defiantly
not work. There was nothing that
would match up. But if I would have
played with the layout before cutting
the first piece, you can see that I
would have been able to cut both
pieces out in this direction.




This was the final result. Again, I
matched the extremes, the dark and
light bars. I had to ignore the interior
stripes, work with the "big picture"
and follow the 20ft rule: If you can't
see it from 20 ft in a few seconds,
then don't worry about. For stockings,
I am willing to follow that. I usually
don't.





Not bad. Again, the micro lines don't
line up, but the macro lines do.






















Ready to sew back to front!

Don't be afraid of plaids! They really are quite friendly.