Confused about yardage :s

[Kyte]

Hello,

I'm having a hard time calculating the yardage for a quilt.

I am doing the snowball block in 2 fabrics. I want it to be 65 x 85 inches without Borders, so 13 x 17 blocks. Each block I'd like to be 5.5 inch square.

How much fabric do I need? I've been trying to calculate it for hours and I'm getting confused.

Thanks,

Richy x

[Dragonfly]

Re: Confused about yardage :s

Okay here's what I did, firstly I assume that 5.5" is the cut size not finished size.

Because you want two colours I took the total number of blocks (221...13x17) and divided by 2 to get a single colour (111 blocks).

I divided the width of the fabric (WOF) by 5.5 (42"/5.5") to get 7 blocks across the WOF. **I use 42" to allow for those few fabric that are narrower than standard, if your fabric is 44" you would get 8 cuts so adjust the math accordingly.

Then I divided the number of total blocks for the colour by the number of cuts across the WOF (111/7 = 16), this is how many WOF strips you need.

Now multiply that by the width of the strip (16x5.5" = 88"), this gives you length of fabric needed, divide this by 36 to get the yards (88"/36" = 2.444yds), so 2.5yds for each of the two colours.

This is just for the base square, not the corner triangles but you could use this same method to calculate yardage for those.

I hope this makes sense.

[janluna]

Re: Confused about yardage :s

Or you could get charm packs with 5x5 inch squares. For a twin size it takes 5 packs. That makes a nice charm pack quilt and they are already cut for you. Each pack contains 42 charms. Although some packs have less and some more the usual is 42. I'm making one of these now. It kills me to cut fabric as I've had 3 back surgeries and I'm tall. So to bend over and cut fabric is hard. I love the precuts. I will also be doing a circle quilt out of layer cakes, they are 10x10 inch squares. I hope this helps for any future quilts you make.
Hugs, Jan

[Patrice]

Re: Confused about yardage :s

this site may help. it is a fabric calculator. www.quiltbug.com/articles/fabric-calculator.htm
I have never used it. so not sure how accurate it is. I always forget about it.

[shell.scraps]

Re: Confused about yardage :s

I love the fabric calculator and I use it a lot. I always add 1/2 yard to all my yardages though for the "oooppss" factor and also I like to have extra left over to use as binding or such on another project.