Fabric by the Yard

Cotton fabric by the yard, cut in one length

Precuts are wonderful until the moment you need a piece bigger than five inches. Then you want yardage. Everything in this collection is cotton fabric by the yard, cut in one continuous length from the bolt and shipped from our own warehouse, so what arrives is a single uncut piece you can take a rotary cutter to wherever you like.

This is a new collection and it is growing. If the print you want is not here yet, it is probably on its way.

What quilting cotton actually is

People ask what the difference is between quilting cotton and the cotton on the next shelf. It is the weave, not the fiber. Quilting cotton is a plain woven cotton, one thread over, one thread under, in a medium weight that holds a crease when you press it and does not stretch out of shape when you sew a quarter inch seam. Apparel cotton is usually softer and drapier, which is exactly what you want in a shirt and exactly what you do not want in a block that has to stay square.

That stability is the whole reason quilters are loyal to it. A stable woven cotton lets you cut two hundred pieces, sew them together, and end up with the size the pattern promised. It is breathable, it presses flat, it takes a needle without fighting, and it washes for decades. There is a reason nobody has improved on it.

Width is the part people forget

Most quilting fabric comes off a 44 inch bolt. After you lose the selvedges you have around 42 inches of usable width, which is fine for cutting blocks and a nuisance for anything larger. A back wider than 42 inches means a seam down the middle.

Wider cotton solves that. At 63 inches you can back anything up to about 55 inches wide in a single piece. At 108 inches, the width sold specifically as quilt backing, you can back a king. We stock both, and the 108 inch Northcott Impressions backings live in our Quilt Backing Fabric collection.

Pick the width by the widest thing you plan to make, not by the price per yard. A cheaper narrow cotton stops being cheaper the moment you spend an evening matching a print across a seam.

How much yardage do you need

For a quilt back, add eight inches to each dimension, four inches of overhang on every side, so the longarm has something to hold. Then check that against the width of the fabric.

Working from 63 inch wide cotton, and assuming the quilt is no more than 55 inches wide:

Anything wider than 55 inches needs either a seam or 108 inch backing. For quilt tops rather than backs, a yard of 63 inch cotton gives you about 40 percent more fabric than a yard off a 44 inch bolt, which is worth doing the arithmetic on before you compare two prices per yard.

What a yard of cotton should cost

Quilt shop cotton in the United States usually sits somewhere between 10 and 16 dollars a yard, and designer collections go higher. That is a fair price for a fabric you will spend forty hours sewing into an heirloom.

It is not always the right price for the rest of what you sew. Muslin for testing a block, a backing nobody will see, a first quilt with a grandchild, a tablecloth, a bag lining, a set of napkins that will be washed every week. For all of that you want cotton you can cut into without flinching, and that is what our everyday yardage is for. Buy the premium cotton for the quilt that matters and keep the everyday on the shelf beside it. Most quilters end up with both.

Before you cut into it

Prewash if you are mixing this fabric with others in a quilt that will be washed, or if a strong color sits next to a white. Cotton can shrink two or three percent, and it is better that it happens in your machine than after the quilting. Skip the prewash if you want that soft crinkle after the first wash, which is a look worth wanting. Either way, press before you cut. A yard that has been folded on a bolt for a year has opinions about where it wants to fold, and a hot iron settles the argument.

What is in here

Cotton fabric by the yard in wide widths, in prints chosen to work as backs, backgrounds and whole cloth as well as they work cut up. Every cut is a single continuous piece, and buying more than one cut takes the quantity discount off automatically at checkout.