How to Sew with Floral Plaid Fabric: Pairing a Diagonal Plaid with Flowers in Mist
A good plaid does quiet, steady work in a quilt — and then the flowers change everything. The Love You Always Floral Plaid in Mist, designed by Sandy Gervais for Riley Blake Designs, features a diagonal plaid with flowers in the center of the print. That combination gives you the structure of a plaid and the softness of a floral in a single fabric, which makes it unusually versatile for quilting, apparel, and home decor.
What This Fabric Is
This is a 100% cotton fabric, 43/44 inches wide, sold by the yard from the Love You Always collection. Like the other prints in that collection, it is intended for quilting, apparel, and home decor — three uses that make sense for a print like this. The diagonal plaid gives the cloth a sense of movement that a straight, on-grain plaid does not have, while the flowers set into the center of the design keep it romantic rather than tailored. The Mist colorway keeps that effect gentle, so the fabric reads as a soft, romantic print rather than a bold statement.
Because it is both a plaid and a floral, treat it as a bridge fabric. It can connect stronger florals to plainer solids, calm a busy collection of prints, or carry a project almost on its own with just one or two quiet companions.
Cutting a Diagonal Plaid with Confidence
A printed diagonal plaid is easier to handle than it looks, because the print runs diagonally even though the fabric itself is a standard woven cotton. Cut on the grain as you normally would — do not try to cut on the bias just because the lines in the print angle across the cloth. Use a rotary cutter, mat, and ruler, and square the fabric first so your cuts stay true.
A few habits help. First, decide before you cut whether the plaid needs to match across seams. In patchwork blocks, exact matching is usually unnecessary and can waste fabric; in a garment front or a large home decor panel, a rough alignment looks more polished. Second, if you want a flower centered in a block, mark the motif through a transparent ruler and fussy cut around it — the centered flowers in this print reward that little bit of extra planning. Third, cut matching pieces from the same area of the repeat where you can, so paired blocks or pillow fronts feel related.
Color Pairing and Project Ideas
Pair this plaid the way you would dress a floral. Soft solids and small-scale coordinates let the flowers stay visible, while a deeper solid picked up from the print gives the eye a place to rest. In a quilt, use it in larger pieces — wide borders, generous squares, or alternating blocks — so both the plaid lines and the flowers have room to show. Chopping any plaid into very small pieces loses the pattern that made you choose it.
Beyond quilts, consider it for a table runner or pillow backs where the diagonal lines add energy to a plain setting, for curtains or valances in a soft, cottage-style room, or for apparel such as a simple skirt, shirt, or a child's dress, where the floral plaid feels classic and easy to wear. It also works well as a quilt backing for a Love You Always top, tying the back to the front with the same romantic mood.
Care
Care follows the instructions given for this fabric: machine wash cold and tumble dry low. As with most quilting cottons, washing in cold water and drying on low helps the fabric keep its color and feel over repeated washes, and a warm press before cutting makes measuring and piecing more accurate.
If you have been looking for one print that can soften a quilt, connect a collection, and still hold its own, a floral plaid like this one is a smart place to start.
Shop the Love You Always Floral Plaid Mist Cotton 43"/44" Fabric Per Yard at Linda's Electric Quilters.
