How many squares from a fat quarter? Fabric yield calculator

Calculator

Quick chart: squares from one piece

Cut sizes, with a simple grid layout. Fat quarters and fat eighths allow half an inch to straighten the edges first (17½ × 20½ and 8½ × 20½ inches).

Worked example: forty 5-inch squares

The calculator opens on this case: 5-inch squares from a fat quarter, 40 needed. It reports 12 per fat quarter, laid out 3 × 4, with 16% of the fabric left over, and says to buy 4 fat quarters. Four give 48 squares, so 8 are spare.

Switch the source and the same 40 squares look like this:

The half yard wastes more than the fat quarter even though it is the same 18 inches deep. After straightening it is 17½ inches, which fits three 5-inch rows with 2½ inches to spare, and that leftover strip runs the full 39½-inch length. It isn’t wasted if the quilt also needs 2½-inch strips or squares, so cut those from it first.

The “3 × 4” layout reads across the first dimension of the source, then down the second: three squares across the 18-inch side of the fat quarter, four down the 21-inch side.

Rectangles: the tool tries both ways

For a rectangle, the calculator counts the grid with the piece one way, then turned 90 degrees, and keeps the better result. It doesn’t matter which measurement you type as the width. Take 2½ × 4½ rectangles from a fat quarter, the size used for 4 × 2-inch flying geese. One way gives 7 across and 4 down, 28 pieces. Turned, it gives 3 across and 8 down, 24. The calculator shows 28, with 12% left over.

That leftover is a strip 2½ inches deep and 17½ inches long at the bottom of the fat quarter, and three more rectangles fit in it turned sideways. So the real count is 31, with about 3% left. This is the “one or two more by turning a row” the note under the result means; with rectangles it can be more. Look for it whenever the result leaves a strip at least as deep as the short side of your piece.

Squares from the larger cuts

The same grid count for the larger cuts, with straightening on for half yards and yards (17½ × 39½ and 35½ × 39½ inches). A jelly roll strip only yields squares as big as its width.

When the result says “None”

With straightening on, a half yard is 39½ inches long. Ask for a 2½ × 40-inch strip and the calculator says the piece is bigger than the fabric. Untick the straightening box and it gives 7 strips from the 18-inch side. Quilting cotton is wider than 40 inches before the selvages come off, so for full-width strips untick the box, or plan on strips 39½ inches long. The same thing happens with a 21-inch strip from a fat quarter, which comes out 20½ once straightened.

For a scrap or a remnant, choose Other size and enter the largest straight-edged rectangle you can trim from it, not its widest points. A piece that measures 20 inches at one end and 17 at the other is a 17-inch piece for this purpose.

Things that change the count

A fat quarter is sold as about 18 × 21 inches, but once the selvage is off and the edge squared, plan on half an inch less each way. Prewashing can take a little more. That half inch is why a fat quarter gives 56 squares at 2½ inches rather than the 64 the label size suggests.

Precuts are measured from the points of their pinked edges, and they’re cut to use as they are, so the calculator doesn’t take anything off charm squares, layer cakes or strips. Don’t prewash them; they shrink and fray out of size.

Quilting cotton is 42 to 44 inches wide, but this site plans on 40 usable inches after the selvages, so half yards and yards here are 40 inches across. And if a print has an up and down, every piece has to be cut the same way, which can cost a row.

More on the cuts themselves in what is a fat quarter and the precut fabric guide. For whole-quilt yardage, backing and binding, StitchTested has a fabric guide and a binding and backing calculator.

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