Fabric Yardage Calculator

How much fabric for a number of pieces?

Quilting cotton is about 42 inches wide off the bolt and closer to 40 usable inches once you trim the selvages. To cut a batch of same-size pieces, you work across that width first: divide 40 by your cut width and round down, and that is how many pieces come from a single strip. Divide your total piece count by that number and round up, and you have how many strips to cut. Each strip is one cut length tall, so the fabric you buy is the strip count times the cut length, rounded up to the nearest eighth of a yard.

Rounding down across the width and up on both counts is deliberate: it makes sure you never come up short, and it accounts for the sliver of fabric left over on each strip.

Prefer the details? Read how many pieces you get from a width of fabric.