Everything you'll ever need to know about sewing a placket.

Hello dear readers. I recently got an email from a customer asking if I could help explain how to sew a placket. This is a question I've gotten numerous times working with vintage and vintage-inspired patterns. The placket was a commonly used closure in tap pants, trousers, dresses and blouses in the 1940's. They started to fade out of the spotlight with the advent of the zipper.

 I find that many new sewers are stumped by vintage patterns that automatically assume that one knows how to sew a placket.
I can even remember my first placket in a pair of 1940's tap pants... I had no clue what to do and frantically searched online for instruction. I didn't find any online, but what did help me a great deal was my well-worn 1927 copy of The Art of Dressmaking by Butterick.
I can't recommend this little book enough! Copies regularly come up for sale for quite cheap so if you see one, snap it up, you won't regret it!

The Art of Dressmaking can explain a placket much better than I can, I'm afraid. My sewing machine is buried under a pile of sewing patterns and I promised myself that I would deal with organizing the patterns before I allowed myself to sew. It's hard to explain a placket without sewing one and taking pictures in the process but between the book, and throwing together some illustrations in Photoshop, I think I have it covered for you!
So without further ado, here is the best instruction I have ever found on how to sew a placket: