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.

My Creative Space

I am going to try to play along with the My Creative Space idea over at Kootoyoo.

My space is an absolute mess! I am in the process of totally re-organizing my studio because I couldn't find the top of my cutting table, and I need room for 3- 10 year olds to cut out their projects. The fabric had taken over! Here are some shots of my basement studio during this upheaval-


These desks are my main work area.

Thread storage and machine supplies on the wall by all the machines. This had to stay organized or I would never get anything done!

The empty wall space here was covered in a floor to ceiling shelf filled with fabrics and bins of yarn, ribbons and other materials. The shelf, and all it contained have been moved into a new area of the basement, where I get to have a fabric room! Wa-hoo!

I thought these black bins ( on the wall over the industrial, above) would be a big help, but I hate them. Even though they are labeled, I can't see what is in them. I need to get more clear boxes, like the ones the threads are in, so I can see things.

It's really important to recognize, and work with, your idiosyncrasies when you are putting money into storage organization. I have learned the hard way that baskets, and other cute things just don't do any good for me. Lesson learned. If I had paid more in the beginning and gotten the shelving I really wanted, something that was very flexible and easy to rearrange, I would have saved a lot of cost in redo's, and down time while re-arranging, and my walls would not look like Swiss cheese! Also, I would have saved the cost of re-buying items I know I have, but can't fine. I'm doing this on a non-existent budget, so what I have has to work.

Too many things piled on top of other things. When I was laid off from my teaching job last year, so much stuff that I had brought to school had to come back home with me, and I have not been able to find space for it all. That's on top of all the stuff that has just never found a home when I was moved into the basement in the first place.


For the last week, I have been working on wrapping all of the fabrics onto half bolts (just a long flat piece of cardboard) and moved out of the studio (Thank God!!!) into a new area of the basement where I am making a fabric room- pictures are clockwise around the fabric room-

Yarn and ribbons in bins. These are the shelves that were on the wall in the other room (above and below, left).

Fabrics waiting to be wrapped onto bolts. The book shelf is temporary, until I figure out what to do with the pieces that I can't wrap on bolts.


The result of 5 days of wrapping fabrics on bolts! This is the start of a beautiful fabric room, where everything is visible all the time. I've rearranged the shelf arrangement on these shelves at least 4 times. A ratchet is a wonderful tool! So is a power screwdriver.

More bins with quilt parts, and a rack for rolled fabrics, finally! I have to thank Sewloutions for the idea of horizontal storage for rolled fabrics; also for the inspiration to get this started. I was just so bogged down with stuff that I wasn't getting anything done, until I saw her post on her studio redo. What she has done with a small space is just wonderful, and extremely usable. I have the space I need for classes, but had no available space to do it.

My plan is to have this finished by the end of the month. Posting this is my way of holding myself accountable to someone other than myself, and I thank you all for that. I will post new pictures when I am done.

How do you store your fabrics? And, even more important, how do you sort the fabrics? Color, type, use? I am open to all suggestions!