Man's button-up: Matching plaids

When I discovered the beautiful and vintage-y modern plaid at Britex, I knew I had found the fabric for which I had been searching.  I had in mind a short sleeve button-up shirt for my husband, but wanted something different than classic dress shirting.  This fab plaid completely fit the bill!   However, once I laid out the fabric and went to cut out my pattern, I realized I had a big challenge ahead of me.  Plaid.  Matching plaid is one issue; deciding in which direction the plaid should be arranged and the overall layout was the other.  Should the plaid on the yoke be diagonal?  If the yoke is on the straight grain, could the pockets be diagonal?  What about the placket??  I was completely paralyzed by indecision for a while, but after looking at some ready-to-wear men's tops, I opted to go for a straight-laced version with no diagonally arranged plaid pieces.  Really working the 70s vibe of the fabric might look great, but I wanted to be sure my husband would actually wear the shirt!

Working with plaid is definitely a challenge, but there are certainly tips to make it easier.  First up, buy more fabric than needed.   I can't stress this enough!  Ask a professional for recommendations for how much (like the nice folks at Britex!).  Tasia from Sewaholic has a great piece on plaid matching.  Her suggestions for carefully pinning your fabric to ensure that the plaids are lined up and drawing plaid lines onto your pattern pieces are invaluable.

This post will help you tackle matching plaids and keeping the pattern continuous across the front of a button-up shirt, with or without button placket.

To keep the plaid continuous across the front, the first order of business is to identify the center front on each of the three main pieces: left and right front pieces, and button placket.  If your pattern does not have separate left and right pieces (the Negroni pattern does not), trace the piece so you have two separate pattern pieces.

Since I drafted the button placket for this shirt, it helped me visualize the process by drawing in the sewing and topstitching lines for the placket on the left piece. 

I decided that I wanted the center of the shirt and button placket to fall between the dominant plaid lines, so the center front of the right side was centered accordingly.  Then, the left side front piece was overlapped onto the other side, carefully lining up the center front lines and pinned everything in place. 

With the pieces overlapping, this is how the plaid pattern will appear on your final garment.  However, the fabric can't be cut with the pieces overlapping, so the plaid lines must be transferred onto the pattern pieces.

Using a straight edge, trace the plaid lines onto your pattern pieces, in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Do not unpin the pieces, just draw straight across the overlapping sections.  You may want to label the plaid lines, particularly if there are multiple designs in the plaid pattern.

The button placket piece could be lapped on top of the other two pieces, but I placed it separately, using the front pieces to guide the location of the horizontal plaid lines.

Once the plaid lines are drawn on the pattern pieces, the pattern can be moved around on the fabric, pinned and cut. 

Collar, yoke and back all match up

With the fabric all cut, you are ready to sew!  Here are a couple of tips for keeping plaid lines together while sewing:

• be sure to mind the width of your seam allowance.  If your sewing machine doesn't have the right seam allowance guideline, measure and draw the guideline on a piece of clear tape.
• use plenty of pins, but don't sew over them (the lump created by the pin may move your fabric).  
• a walking foot can really help keep plaid lines together, particularly for thick fabrics. 

A follow up post on creating the notched pocket (an option from Colette Patterns) and coordinating notched sleeve hem (below) will be coming soon!

Man's button-up

After sewing up the last button-up for my husband, I got really excited to make another.  The process just wasn't as hard as I had envisioned and the final product actually got worn--a lot!  So, using what I had learned making the "wearable muslin", I got started on a plaid version, with this beautiful and perfect fabric from Britex.  However, even with a tested pattern in hand, new challenges awaited with loads and loads of plaid to manage (my tutorial is here at the Britex Fabrics blog, and will be posted here soon) and in the end, this version proved to be much more time consuming than the first.

As described in the previous post, this shirt has the bones of the Negroni pattern by Colette, with some modifications.  Instead of a camp collar, I went with a collar stand/ regular collar and a button placket.  The arms were reduced in width and length to make it slightly less informal and fit my skinny bicyclist husband better.

For the pockets, I used one of the free options provided by Colette Patterns and carried the notched design to the sleeve hem (a second tutorial is coming for those, too!).   See, he's pointing out the notches, so you don't miss them :)

Even though I wasn't brave enough to go all urban cowboy with diagonal plaids and whatnot, I just had to use pearl snaps, as a nod to the vintage-y feel of the fabric.  Snaps vs. buttons are almost a wash in terms of time spent and ease of application, but I felt a little more nervous with the first whack of the hammer than if I were sewing a button hole, since there's no going back after the snaps embed in the fabric.

I'm not convinced that they are the sturdiest things around, so of course at the instruction that he's not to rip his shirt off like a male stripper, my husband, of course, pretended to do so.  Thanks, babe!

Look at that all that plaid matching--so satisfying!

There are flat-felled seams throughout, even the armholes (possibly the most finicky bit of the whole shirt), so it's pretty on the inside, too. Honestly, I am so enamored with this shirt and my husband even wears it!  Win!

Upcoming: tutorials on plaid matching across a button placket and creating the notched pocket & sleeve details!