Fabric Cost Calculator

The calculator covers five common projects with sensible default measurements: a dress (1.5m length on 137cm-wide fabric), curtains, quilts, bags and cushion covers. It then adds a 10% wastage allowance, rounds up to the nearest quarter metre, and multiplies by your price per metre. For a typical 1.5m dress on 137cm-wide fabric at £12 per metre, that's 1.65m metres after waste, rounded to 1.75m, costing £21.

Why round up to a quarter metre? Because fabric shops cut on 25cm increments. Asking for 1.66m gets you 1.75m anyway. Why 10% wastage? Because pattern matching, fabric flaws, off-grain corrections and the inevitable mis-cut all eat fabric. Skip the wastage allowance and you'll be back at the shop next weekend buying another half-metre at the new (sold-out) price. Pattern matching alone can push wastage to 25-30% on busy florals or large-scale checks.

Most retail fabric comes in 44 inch (1.12m), 54 inch (1.37m), or 60 inch (1.52m) widths. The wider the fabric, the less linear length you need. A garment that takes 2.5m on 44-inch quilting cotton might take only 2m on 60-inch dressmaking poplin. The calculator switches the maths automatically when you change the width dropdown, so you can compare two bolts of the same print at different widths and price-per-metre.

Quilting cotton is almost always 44 inch. Dressmaking fabric (poplin, viscose, linen) is usually 54 inch or 60 inch. Curtain and upholstery fabric runs 137cm to 280cm wide; the wide end (sometimes 'extra-wide') matters for lined curtains where you want a single panel without joins. If you're not sure, measure the bolt at the shop, don't trust the label, and convert from inches to metres if needed (44 inch is 1.118m, 54 inch is 1.372m, 60 inch is 1.524m).

A 60cm pattern repeat on a curtain means every panel must align at the same point in the print. To get matching panels, you cut each one to the next full repeat above your finished length, and you order extra. Two 240cm-drop curtains on fabric with a 60cm repeat need at least 5m, not 4.8m, because the second panel starts 60cm later than ideal in the cutting plan. Quilting prints with directional florals or stripes work the same way - one wrong-way piece ruins the block.

The calculator has a pattern-repeat field. Enter the repeat in cm and the maths adjusts. For a plain or random-pattern fabric, leave it at zero. For directional prints (people, animals, words, large florals), add 30-50% extra on top of the calculator's number, especially for clothing where the pattern direction must match across seams. The classic disaster: cutting a sleeve upside-down because the print 'looks like a leaf' until you sew it on and your client's mum points out it's a fern.

For cushion covers, plan for both faces of the cushion plus seam allowances and a zip or envelope opening. The calculator handles the maths in cm: enter the cushion size and it works out the area, applies wastage and rounds up. A 45cm square cushion needs about 0.5m of 137cm-wide fabric (front + back + 1.5cm seam allowance + envelope overlap). Anything bigger than 60cm and you should switch to the 'curtains' calculation, because you'll want the print direction to match.

Bags are the same: total surface area divided by fabric width plus wastage. The trap with bags is the lining - if you want a contrasting lining, you need the same metreage in a second fabric, often costing as much again as the outer. Don't forget interfacing for structured bags (typically 0.5m of medium-weight fusible per small bag). For seam allowances on patterns that don't include them, see the [seam allowance calculator](/seam-allowance-calculator).