The Fabric Requirements for a Quilt

Close up of a quilt patch.Blue and coral quilt block background image by Bluebird from Fotolia.com

Quilting is a fun, creative and practical craft. Much like knitting, quilting can provide a relaxing escape from the chaos of the day. Quilting is also practical in the sense that when you are done making the quilt, it starts giving back to you in the form of warmth, comfort and decoration. Whether you are making a quilt for a bed, a wall or for any other use, there are some general fabric requirements to follow.

Quilt Sizes

Quilts are generally built from patches of square fabric. A common quilt patch size is 10 x 10 inches. Once you figure out the size of your quilt patches, you can determine how many patches you will need for your quilt. For example, if you are using 10 x 10 inch patches to make a full-size bed quilt, which is about 78 x 87 inches, then you will need about 8 patches wide and 9 long, which equals 72 patches total. This will give you enough fabric to make a 80 by 90 inch quilt, slightly larger than the recommended full-size bed quilt.

When estimating the size of quilt patches, it helps to factor in any borders you plan on adding to your quilt.

Once you know how many patches you'll need for your quilt, all you have to do it determine how much fabric you'll need for each patch and then multiply it by the number of patches. Depending on the complexity of each patch you may need only one kind of fabric or dozens.

After you figure out how much of each type of fabric you need for each patch, multiply that number by the total patches and that's the approximate amount of fabric you'll need. It helps to overestimate when determining fabric requirements, since you don't want to end up short on fabric.

There are also a number of online quilt-fabric calculators to help you determine your quilting-fabric requirements. You might want to use one to double-check your estimates. See the resources section of this article for a quilt-fabric estimator.