Fabric Yardage Calculator — Free Online Tool

How to use Fabric Yardage Calculator

Plan rectangular sewing pieces across usable fabric width, accounting for seam allowances on all edges, quantity, cutting rows, waste and purchase yardage.

1. Measure the finished rectangular shape and choose inches or centimeters.
2. Enter seam allowance for each edge and number of pieces.
3. Use the actual usable fabric width after excluding selvedges.
4. Read cutting rows, cut piece dimensions and rounded purchase yardage.

Important: One-orientation rectangular layout only, not an optimized nesting or garment pattern layout.

Formula and methodology

Cut piece width/length = finished dimension + 2 × seam allowance. Pieces per row = floor(usable fabric width ÷ cut piece width); rows = ceil(quantity ÷ pieces per row). Yardage = row count × cut length × waste factor ÷ 36.

The interactive calculations depend on the inputs, units and assumptions you provide. Display values are rounded for readability, but calculations use unrounded input values where applicable.

Worked example

For four 10 × 10 inch pieces with no allowance on 20-inch usable fabric, two pieces fit per row. Two rows require 20 inches of fabric, approximately 0.556 yard, rounded up to the next eighth yard: 0.625 yard.

Try entering your own measurements above to reproduce this calculation and understand each result.

Frequently asked questions