The Clothing Seller’s Guide to Fabric Patterns and Prints - The Plaids and Checks

Don’t know your houndstooth from your herringbone? Your tartan from your toile? Your paisley from your plaid? This series of guides will help eBay sellers (and buyers) to identify all of the various fabric prints with descriptions and sample photographs.

Other Guides Include:

The Clothing Seller's Guide to Fabric Patterns and Prints - Florals, Paisleys and Figurals

The Clothing Seller’s Guide to Fabric Patterns and Prints - Menswear Patterns

The Clothing Seller’s Guide to Fabric Patterns and Prints - Stripes

Madras

Madras is a lightweight cotton fabric that originated in Madras, India. True madras is designed to bleed every time it is washed, so the colors blend together in a soft mix. The fabric is typically plaid. Modern madras is any fabric printed in the traditional madras plaid but does not bleed.

The first sample is a modern madras printed in the traditional plaid, but does not bleed. The second sample is "guaranteed to bleed" – as it says on the label.

Windowpane Check

Windowpane check consists of a solid background and a large grid formed by intersecting vertical and horizontal lines.

Gingham

True gingham is a smooth, cotton fabric with alternating stripes of white and a single color running both horizontally and vertically to form checks. While only two colors are used in the fabric, where the solid color stripes overlap one another a third, darker, color is formed. Ginghams originated in India and were exported to England and America. In the 19th century, any cotton fabric with checks, plaids, or stripes was called a gingham, but today it is only the characteristic check pattern described above. The scale can range from a small to very large prints.

The second gingham sample also has a floral printed on top of the gingham.

Buffalo Plaid

A plaid with large checks of two different colors, especially red and black, but also blue and black or green and black.

Tartan

A tartan is a specific woven pattern that often signifies a particular Scottish clan in the modern era. The pattern is made with alternating bands of colored threads woven as both warp and weft at right angles to each other. The resulting blocks of color repeat vertically and horizontally in a distinctive pattern of squares and lines.

The first sample is "bias" cut (cut at a 45-degree angle) so the pattern looks more like diamonds than squares.

Argyle

The term argyle comes from Clan Campbell of (former) County Argyle in Scotland. Their traditional family tartan consisted of a multicolored diamond pattern on a solid background.

Argyle sample compliments of kidbare

Visit the Fashion Boulevard Boutique