I thought it would be fun this summer to do a hit-and-miss mini blog series featuring quilting cotton basics. Every fabric company has their own version of basics – including a solid, some other classic prints, and perhaps a few novelty prints that are company-specific – that they keep in stock constantly. I wanted to show how some of these could be utilized for garments as well as quilting and other projects, since basics are often easier to source and less expensive than some of the fancier prints. 

Starting off this series with one of my favorites – gingham!

Gingham is surely one of the most versatile prints, and never goes out of style. Red and white gingham will always be a kitchen accessory classic, and the fun pattern shows up perennially everywhere in clothing and home dec. It can be ultra girly, like pink gingham baby dresses, or more sophisticated – suitable for holidays or year round.

Generally, though it may come in different sizes of pattern, the 1/8" gingham is most popular for quilting because of its small scale – but fortunately that's also a good scale to use for clothing too!

For my outfit featuring this print, I was inspired by this vintage image from Pinterest and decided to do my own spin on recreating this lovely ensemble. 

I chose black and white gingham from Riley Blake Designs, and picked out from my vintage pattern stash three patterns – a narrow skirt, wide skirt, and jacket – to make a 3 piece mix-and-match outfit. 

It was so fun to sew and style! The jacket has so many cute details, especially the little petal inserts which I decided to cut on the bias. 

I also added white piping to the collar and cuffs, to bring it a little closer to the inspiration image, and had the perfect tiny white buttons in my stash – again, to match the photo. The piping added some nice structure to the collar shape.

It went together remarkably fast, and I really love the jacket pattern. Another time I'll tweak the fit a bit, but it's definitely a good go-to 1950s dressy jacket pattern!

The wide skirt is a simple 6-gored 1950s skirt. I am wearing a vintage crinoline over it, and it has a nice amount of swoosh.

For this styling, I went a bit more formal so I paired it with black satin heels by American Duchess, and black accessories and a corsage from my vintage collection. 

For the other wearing option I wanted to feature, for a slightly different silhouette, the narrow skirt has a pleat in the back to add fullness when walking.

I changed up a few accessories to show some of the versatility of this type of outfit, which really can be suitable for many different occasions! This is just a tiny sample of the different looks I could create.

So this quilting cotton is perfectly suitable for adult clothing – and it goes without saying that it's extremely common for baby and toddler clothes as well. 

What about other uses? Here is just a small sampling. Gingham in a baby quilt I made recently…

…and as an embroidered curtain for the nursery.

One of my favorite uses is not just an all-over main pattern, but as an accent. See how cute this vintage apron is with the gingham used as a contrast rather than the main apron?

But honestly, this just scratches the surface of the possibilities for this fun print. The shortest web search will give you more ideas than you can possibly need. Use it as an accent or a main theme, for clothing or anything else! Gingham quilt binding or quilt backing works just as well as gingham in the blocks, or for smaller sewing projects like pencil cases or bags. I'm sure I'll never run out of ideas for it!