So it turns out that Plaidurday is a thing (as it should be) and it’s on October 5th this year. I plan to participate fully — I’ve been itching to make a plaid shirtdress (or two) and this is a great excuse.
I don’t know if I’ll have all the kinks of a new shirtdress pattern worked out in order to use this fabric, but I hope so:
It’s plaid AND dots, and it’s really, really nice Italian cotton (here’s a close-up). I bought it in Portland completely serendipitously — there was a great little fabric store about a block from my hotel. I really liked the fabric store — it’s called Josephine’s — for a number of reasons. First, they weren’t irked at all when I wandered in fifteen minutes to closing; I’ve been to way too many small shops where it’s as much as your life is worth to go in thirty minutes before the closing time written on the door to take that niceness for granted. And in addition to this plaid, they had some really good fabric, including the fox fabric I posted about the other day. (It’s always fun to see something you’ve already made up still on the bolt in the fabric store — it feels like greeting an old friend.) Besides, I’m always wary in a (US) fabric store when I don’t recognize *anything* — I feel like that means everything is either super-generic or really, really old. But this place had some nice Moda fabrics and a good balance between cotton prints and fancier stuff. (Although: what is up with all the ITY knits or whatever those slinky poly things are? I don’t understand it.) They also had this pattern — which has been in my “maybe” pile for a while — made up and on display, and it looked really good.
They don’t have a web store (and anyway, I bought the last of this on the bolt) but they do take phone orders (and also had it in blue). I was briefly tempted by the blue colorway, but it had a lot of navy in it — this plaid has just enough blue, anyway. The whole point of plaid is being able to pull any of the colors in it to the foreground through determined accessorizing, and I just never am able to find navy shoes that don’t make me feel like a cross between a first-year associate in a very conservative law firm and a gawky eighth grader in a parochial school.
This is probably my favorite kind of plaid — a little rough and painterly, not exact (which seems like an odd thing to prefer in a plaid, but there it is). And the dots are just a whole extra level of busy-cute.
So what are you wearing for Plaidurday?
A Dress A Day 
I don’t get those knit prints either. Good luck with your dress!
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That plaid is TOTALLY AWESOME! I look at hundreds of fabrics online and rarely see one I like and then you show up with something nobody else can have. Hope you’re feeling very smug about this. Very much looking forward to the dress.
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I can’t sew at all, never could, but I love to read about it and love cruising fabric stores. On Plaidurday I will not be wearing plaid, don’t own any, but I will be remembering an awesome pastel plaid sleeveless dress I had in 1956, back when I was a size 10 (0 today it seems, what an embarrassing fact, to be a 0). I was ashamed to be a 10–actually, the dress was a 9–as curves were much more in style in my youth. The dress had a bow in the same fabric at the hip–a Jackie Kennedy feature as I recall. Moderate boat neck. Wish I could remember the shoes!
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Love plaid. LoVe it! So how come all I have is a couple of old men’s Pendleton shirts? (Not old enough yet to be quaintly vintage…) Hmmmmm….thanks for posting this a week beforehand. Maybe I can come up with something by the 5th.
Oh, wait…. there’s that bias plaid skirt that always make me look I should be wearing saddle shoes and colored ankle socks with a little short sleeved jumper and pin curls. We’ll see.
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I have this weird thing for plaid, and I love victorian clothing, specifically natural form era (no bustle but lots of back draping on an otherwise close fitting skirt, roughly 1877-1883), and I have at least four sets of Victorian outfits that are predominantly plaid. 🙂 Which one I wear depends on the weather. Hot weather gets the seersucker, cooler weather gets the wool. 🙂
-d
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Navy Superga runners are the summer answer to the navy shoe question – not sure about winter…
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“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” Your fabric makes me think of this classic comedy, for some reason. All things plaid are delightful; a hand-brushed plaid is delightfully dotty; polka dots on top of anything make me giddy with delight. Go thou forth and make a dress, woman! And remember that it is now okay to mix black, brown, and navy accessories. Last pair of navy flats I bought was because the 20-something sweet young thing standing beside me rejected them as “too much like a middle-aged librarian.” I am middle-aged, and I have worked in a public library before. I wear the shoes proudly.
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I’m glad I found out about Plaidurday in time to “celebrate.” I usually don’t find out about these silly/fun little days until maybe 9pm on that day. I don’t think I have any more plaid in the stash but I have plaid I can wear if the weather is cool that day.
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[…] What are YOU doing for Plaidurday on October 5? […]
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Josephine’s IS fantastic, they had such lovely silks when I was there last!!! I bought a long length of some beautiful black-on-black Italian cotton when I was there last….longing to go again…no sales tax!
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” I’ve been to way too many small shops where it’s as much as your life is worth to go in thirty minutes before the closing time written on the door to take that niceness for granted. ” Oh, man, I don’t know whether to be relieved or discouraged to hear that it’s not just my local fabric store that treats you like you’re planning to stowaway and hide in the store overnight if you walk in 30 minutes before closing! They give you the evil eye, watch your every step and tell you “We’re closing!” every 60 seconds. Are they afraid they might make a sale?!
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I found out about plaidurday from here just in time! I wore a dress/jumper in Black Watch. I posted about plaidurday on FB and a friend of mine dressed her kids in plaid for school based on my mentioning it. The amazing powers of social media never cease! lol
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