Set one-way prints, pre-washing and fabric width

Some facts change how much fabric you buy and how it’s cut. Quarter Inch keeps each where it belongs:

• With the fabric: whether a print has a right way up, its usable width, and whether it’s already washed. These follow the fabric into every quilt that uses it.
• With the quilt: the width of fabric, whether you pre-wash, the extra strip for straightening, and the backing, batting and binding.
• With your account: your usual habits, which every new quilt starts from.

A print with a right way up

Trees, houses and words look wrong upside down or on their side. Tell Quarter Inch once, and every piece is cut so it stands up in the finished quilt.

1. Open the quilt’s Cutting page, on Yardage. Choose the fabric’s name to open About this fabric.

2. Under Does it have a right way up?, choose No up or down, One way (wrong upside down or on its side) or Two way (fine upside down, wrong on its side, like stripes).

3. Hold the fabric so the print stands up, and say where the selvages are: At the sides (most prints) or At the top and bottom. Then save.

Under each amount, Yardage then says what keeping the print upright cost: often nothing, sometimes a little more. When it changes how the side borders are cut, you choose under How to cut the side borders: Down the length, first or Across, joined.

The first time you put a photo or print in a quilt, the designer asks the same question beside it, without stopping you. Choose Way up over the quilt to see an arrow on each piece of a print with a right way up.

Pre-washing

1. On Yardage, under Worked out with, switch on I pre-wash my fabric.

2. Set How much it shrinks, from 1% to 10%. Cotton is usually 2% to 5%.

Every fabric’s width and length are made smaller by that much, rounded the safe way, and each amount says what washing added. A fabric you’ve washed already can say so: switch on Already washed in About this fabric, and nothing is added for it.

Widths

• Quilting cotton: set the quilt’s Width of fabric under Worked out with. It’s the usable width, selvages off, from 40″ to 44″.
• A wider fabric: in About this fabric, under Usable width, choose Wide…, then what it’s Sold as. Quarter Inch takes 2″ off for the selvages; change it if you’ve measured.
• Wide backing: choose 108″ backing.

Also under Worked out with, Add a strip to each adds one strip of each fabric for straightening. Every amount is rounded up to the next ⅛ yd, never down.

Backing, batting and binding

On Yardage, each has its own Change: the backing’s overhang and its fabric, the batting (a package, from a roll, or I have batting already), and the binding’s fabric, strip width and grain. Ask your longarm quilter how much overhang they want. More in Yardage, and how we worked it out.

Your usual settings

On your account page, under Cutting and yardage, set your usual Width of fabric, whether I pre-wash my fabric, how much bigger the backing and batting are than the top, and your Binding strips. New quilts start with these. A quilt you’ve changed them on keeps its own.

In My fabrics, a photo’s own dialog has Usable width, Right way up and Already washed too. Change them there, and they follow the fabric into every quilt that uses it.

On an iPad or a phone

On an iPad the steps are the same as on a computer.

If it doesn’t look right

• A solid has no right way up to set. It looks the same every way around, so it’s cut whichever way uses least.
• A quilt didn’t take my account’s settings. They’re for new quilts. Change the quilt’s own on its Yardage.
• Pre-washing won’t go past 10%. Fabric that shrinks more is best washed first, then measured: mark it Already washed.

Checked against the app on October 26, 2026