Working with a Really LARGE Print

So…

in a recent post I showed you how our new design, the Cosmo Convertible looks all dressed up in PVC-coated cotton print by Marimekko and because so many of you were interested in trying out this fascinating material, we included a list of helpful tips to increase your chances for a successful outcome.

But here’s the deal… following the original post we got almost as many inquiries as to how I fussy cut the fabric so that the print would “match” along the side edges, so I thought I’d dedicate one more post to this particular sample, only this time I’ll show for you how I went about making the sides “LOOK” like they were perfectly matched.   🙂

The first thing I need to let you know about this fabric is that it literally had the largest repeat I have EVER worked with. Do you believe that ONE repeat was ACTUALLY 1- 1/4 yards and about 50″ wide? So with this in mind, there was NO WAY there was going to be a perfect match at the seams unless I had bought two repeats, and that just wasn’t happening at this price! 🙂

So… in order to get a “bird’s eye” view of what I had to work with, I laid the fabric full out on the floor (all one repeat of it, that is…).

Next, I traced myself some full-sized pattern pieces for the Bag Front and the Upper and also the Lower Back. It’s impossible to do this having to place pattern pieces on the fold. The full-sized pieces let’s me see BOTH side edges, which is imperative.

But, it didn’t take me long to realize that there would be impossible to get a good match on both sides. So I opted for the next best thing… that being a pretty darn good match on one side and a color-blocked match on the other side, but even that was difficult to find. That random pink flower up in the upper corner messed up most every one of my plans until I landed on this one.

With this placement, the seam in the midst of the red flower is a near perfect match. I then cheated the bottom corners out just a tad in order to get a better color match on the opposite side seam. You’ll notice that now both top corner edges on that side will be black and white… a completely different black & white print… but still black & white all the same, and I’m afraid that’s as good as its gonna get. (As you can see, I “placed” the 2nd SideBack pattern piece with a red outline so you could more easily visualize it with me.)

The yellow print on both side edge “makes its appearance” about 7″ down from the top corner of the Bag. The print is a considerably different… after all, the black & white print is a total NON-match, and the direction of the yellow lines is out of sync, but because the colors aligns pretty much perfect, the eye is pleased with the outcome (and so am I).   You can see the finished result for this seam at right.

At left you can see how the seams on the “red” side of the bag turned out. It looks real good along the upper half of the seam, no surprise there, but the matching worsens toward the bottom corner, a direct result of “cheating” the edges out to improve the color match on the “yellow” side of the bag.  🙂

So…

I don’t know how helpful this was. I’ve used this technique before as I actually quite enjoy the tricky alignment challenges that some prints present. Hopefully this will at least provide graphic evidence that your matching need not be perfect in order to be pleasing and sometimes the most satisfying outcomes unfold VERY slowly (I easily spent over 1-1/2 hours cutting out these five pieces.

But now… it’s YOUR turn!

I’d love to know if there’s anyone else out there how loves a fussy-cutting challenge?
And if not, do you think you’d be inclined to tackle one now?

And remember, we actually LOVE comments (and questions too), so if you’d like to share yours, please do so in the space provided below and stay tuned for our next post in this series because we’re getting oh-so close to the release!

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