What This Fabric Is
The Red White and Starry Blue Too Flags Cotton Wideback Fabric, made by Studio E Fabrics, is a 108-inch-wide quilting cotton printed with American flags in red, white, and blue. Instead of the standard 44/45-inch width, this fabric is woven more than twice as wide, so a single length can span the back of most quilts with no seams at all. It is 100% cotton, with the stable hand, crisp press, and breathability quilters expect from good quilting cotton — the wide format simply removes the piecing step from backing a quilt.
A flags print also does design work on the back. Patriotic quilts — Quilts of Valor, Fourth of July throws, veterans' gifts, and red-white-and-blue samplers — often end up with a plain back, because piecing a printed backing from narrow fabric means matching a busy pattern across seams. On a 108-inch wideback, the flags run uninterrupted edge to edge, so the back looks as intentional as the front.
How to Choose a Backing: Start With the Size Math
Use the standard rule first: your backing should measure your quilt top plus 8 inches in both directions — 4 extra inches on every side. That overhang gives a longarm quilter room to load and clamp the quilt, and a home quilter room to baste and quilt to the edges without running short.
Now run that number against the 108-inch width. A 60 by 72 inch throw needs a 68 by 80 inch backing, which fits easily across one width at about 2 1/4 yards. A 72 by 90 inch twin needs an 80 by 98 inch backing — still one width, at about 2 3/4 yards. Even a 90 by 95 inch queen needs a 98 by 103 inch backing, which fits with room to spare at about 2 7/8 yards. Only when your top is wider than about 100 inches does the plus-8 rule push you past a single width, and then a seam in this cotton presses flat and behaves well under quilting.
Cotton vs. Minky vs. Flannel
A 108-inch cotton wideback like this one is the stable, breathable default: no stretch, crisp pressing, and seamless coverage for larger quilts. Minky is the comfort choice — polyester plush that feels warm the moment you wrap up in the quilt — but it has some stretch, more drape, and usually a narrower width. Flannel sits in the middle: brushed cotton, warmer and softer than quilting cotton while staying fairly stable, though rarely this wide. For a patriotic quilt that will be presented and displayed as often as it is slept under, cotton's flat, stable finish keeps both sides looking sharp.
Working Tips: Folds, Prewashing, and Longarm Loading
Pressing the fold: Widebacks arrive folded, and that center crease can be stubborn on cotton. Press from the wrong side with a hot, steamy iron along the fold, and let the fabric cool flat before moving it. A light mist of water helps a crease that survives the first pass.
Prewashing: Cotton shrinks a little, and a backing that shrinks after quilting can pull a quilt out of shape. Prewash this wideback the way you plan to wash the finished quilt, especially if your top is made from prewashed fabric. If your top fabrics were not prewashed, keep the backing unwashed so everything shrinks together later.
Longarm loading: Load the backing with the length parallel to the rollers and the selvages squared, then check that the flags hang straight — a directional print shows any skew right away. Keep tension even rather than tight, and confirm the 4-inch overhang on all sides before basting. At a domestic machine, this cotton feeds like any quilting cotton, so a walking foot and normal tension are all you need.
Care
Care for the finished quilt as you would any cotton quilt: machine wash cold on a gentle cycle with like colors, and tumble dry low or line dry. The cotton fibers soften with washing while holding their shape, and the red, white, and blue print stays crispest washed in cold water and stored out of prolonged direct sunlight.
Shop the Red White and Starry Blue Too Flags Cotton Wideback Fabric per yard at Linda's Electric Quilters.
