How Much Fabric Do I Buy?

Whenever I finish the digital design for a new quilt, the next step is to figure out what fabrics I need to create my artwork in real life. I always check my stash first, but inevitably I will find myself at the fabric store (or more than one fabric store). And then there's the question: How much fabric to get?

Because I design all of my quilt compositions on my computer, I—in theory—know exactly how much fabric I need. So, great, problem solved. Right? Not so fast.

Take a look at how my digital designs are organized:

Bowtie Kitty template

In the above screenshot, the quilt template (basically a pattern) is the square on the left. All of the pieces that make up that design are organized by color on the artboards to the right. The grids on those artboards are 1" squares, so you can see exactly how much material is needed for each color.

For example, the kitty's nose is made from three shades of pink. The lightest pink shape fits into a 1" square, so I only need 1" of light pink fabric. I have 1" of light pink in my stash, but if for some reason I didn't and had to buy a fabric, I would by 1/3 of a yard.

Is 1/3 yard more than you were expecting? The reason I never purchase less than 1/3 yard is because 1/3 yard is 12". A sticky mat for a cutting machine is 12" wide. Buying fabric that is 12" wide lets me optimize usage for my cutting machine.

What about my bigger designs?

Here is the template for the background in my quilt "The Arrival".

The Arrival background

The kitty quilt, finished, is 12" x 12". "The Arrival" is 65" x 44". Consequently, I needed waaaay more fabric for it than I did the cat. But I'm also not so focused on min/maxing that I care about figuring out whether I need 1/3, 2/3, or 1 full yard for each fabric. So when purchasing fabric for a larger quilt, my default is 1 yard.

And, conveniently, 1 yard is 3x the width of a sticky mat, so I'm still able to be efficient when cutting it up for my designs.