How Much Fabric Do I Need? The Complete UK Fabric Quantity Guide

How much fabric do I need? For most adult garments, 1.5m to 3m. A knee-length A-line dress in a UK size 16 takes 2.0m at 150cm wide. A pair of lined bedroom curtains for a 150cm track takes 7.5m. A 45cm cushion cover takes half a metre. The full charts are below, and every figure has the cost in pounds beside it.

Here is the problem this guide exists to solve. Your pattern was drafted in America and quotes 2⅞ yards at 45 inches. Your fabric shop sells metres at 115cm and 150cm. Nobody converts it for you, the numbers on the envelope are printed in a grid of eight sizes and two widths that you have to squint at, and if you get it wrong by 20cm you have either wasted money or ruined a Saturday.

So this page gives you the numbers straight. Charts for garments in UK sizes 8 to 24. Charts for curtains, cushions, blinds and bedding. The yard-to-metre conversion done properly, including the bit almost everyone skips. And because we sell fabric by the metre from around a pound, every quantity here carries a worked cost, so you can see what the difference between 2.4m and 2.8m actually means in your pocket. Usually it is about forty pence.

The two numbers that decide everything: fabric width and pattern repeat

Metreage is not a property of the garment. It is a property of the garment and the cloth. Change the width of the bolt and the same dress can need 30 per cent more or less. Change from a plain to a large repeating print and it can need 25 per cent more again. Everything else; your size, the sleeve length, whether it is lined, is a smaller adjustment on top of those two.

Width: 115cm and 150cm, and why 35cm matters so much

UK fabric arrives on two common widths. 115cm is the old 45-inch bolt (44in and 45in cloths both get sold as "115cm"). 150cm is the old 60-inch bolt. Quilting cottons, poplins, lawns and most craft prints are 115cm. Jerseys, suitings, fleece, most curtain and upholstery cloth and a lot of viscose are 150cm.

The jump matters because of how pattern pieces tile. A dress front cut on the fold needs, say, 55cm of width. On 115cm fabric you can lay one such piece across and the leftover 60cm strip is only good for facings and sleeves. On 150cm you can lay two 55cm pieces side by side with room to spare; front and back come out of the same length of cloth instead of two consecutive lengths. That single change is where most of the saving comes from.

The 1.3 rule

To convert a 150cm metreage to 115cm, multiply by 1.3 and round up to the next 10cm. A dress needing 1.8m at 150cm needs 2.4m at 115cm. Going the other way, multiply by 0.77. It is a rule of thumb, not a law, narrow pieces like sleeves and trouser legs tile better than the rule suggests, and one garment breaks it completely (see the circle skirt note further down) but it is right within about 10cm on ordinary dressmaking, and it errs generous.

Pattern repeat: the number on the listing you have been ignoring

A pattern repeat is the vertical distance before the print starts again. Small ditsy florals repeat every 5–8cm. Mid-scale prints repeat every 15–25cm. Big furnishing damasks and large botanicals repeat every 30–64cm. Plains and non-directional textures have no repeat at all, which is why they are the cheapest fabric to use as well as to buy.

Repeat costs you money in two places. On garments it forces you to shuffle pieces up and down the cloth to line the print up across a seam, and every shuffle leaves an unusable gap. On curtains it is brutal, because each drop has to be cut at a whole number of repeats so the pattern sits at the same height on every panel. A 32cm repeat can add well over a metre to a pair of lounge curtains. There is a full worked example of exactly that in the how much fabric for curtains UK guide.

Before you buy anything, check the listing for two figures: the width, and the repeat if the fabric is printed or woven with a design. If the repeat is not stated, assume it is roughly the height of one obvious motif and add accordingly.

Garment metreage chart: UK sizes 8 to 24 at both widths

These figures are for a plain, non-directional fabric with no repeat, cut with ordinary seam allowances and no contrast panels. Each is the top of its size band, so it is safe for every size in that band. They include a small working margin but not a nap allowance.

*Cost columns are worked examples on the 150cm size 14–18 figure, at indicative rates of £1 and £3 a metre. Our ranges vary and prices change — check the listing for what a given cloth actually costs today.

Read that coat row again. A mid-length wool-blend coat, lined, in a size 18: 3.1m of shell and 2.1m of lining, 5.2m of cloth in total. At £1 a metre that is £5.20 of fabric. At £3 a metre it is £15.60. At the £22 a metre that a nice coating costs in an independent fabric shop, it is £114.40 — and that is why almost nobody makes coats any more. The maths, not the skill, is what stops people.

If you want the granular version of this table — shift, wrap, fit-and-flare and maxi charted size by size rather than in bands — that lives in how many metres of fabric for a dress. And if you want the whole cost of a finished garment including zips, thread and interfacing set against a high-street equivalent, see is it cheaper to make your own clothes.

Three adjustments to make before you buy

• Height. The charts assume roughly 165cm. If you are over 175cm, add 0.2m to any full-length garment and 0.1m to a knee-length one. Under 155cm, take 0.1m off — but only if you are confident, because you cannot uncut cloth.
• Weight and drape. A heavier cloth needs more ease and often a wider hem, and a very drapey one needs a deeper hem allowance because it will drop. There is more on that in how fabric weight affects drape and fit.
• Shrinkage. Cotton, linen and viscose can lose 3–7 per cent in the first wash. That is 10cm off a 2m cut. Pre-wash before cutting, and buy the pre-wash allowance in — the reasons are set out in why fabrics shrink.

Home project metreage chart

Home sewing is where the price-per-metre really bites, because the quantities are large. Curtains and bedding are measured in metres by the handful, not by the fraction.

The cushion row is the one worth memorising. A 45cm envelope cover takes a front of 46 x 46cm and two backs of 46 x 33cm. On 150cm-wide cloth you can lay all three pieces in a single 46cm row with 12cm spare. Half a metre. Fifty pence at a pound a metre. Six of them for the price of a coffee, against £12 to £20 each on the high street at the time of writing.

For soft furnishings the fabric weight matters more than the metreage. A curtain in a 120gsm cotton will hang badly however much of it you buy, and a blanket in the wrong cloth will pill in a month — there is a proper comparison in best fabric for a blanket. And if you are working in the other direction, from small pieces upwards, what is a fat quarter UK covers the pre-cut sizes and what each one yields.

Converting a US pattern's yardage to metres, properly

Two steps. Almost everyone does the first and skips the second.

Step one: the length. One yard is exactly 0.9144m. Multiply, then round up to the next 10cm because shops cut in tenths.

Step two: the width. This is the step that catches people. American patterns quote yardage in two columns, 45in and 60in. Those are 114.3cm and 152.4cm. Your bolt is 115cm or 150cm. They are not the same numbers.

• 45in to 115cm: our bolt is 0.7cm wider. Use the 45in yardage as-is. No adjustment.
• 60in to 150cm: our bolt is 2.4cm narrower, a shortfall of about 1.6 per cent. On a short layout it disappears into the margin. On anything over 2.5m, add roughly 1.5 per cent — in practice, one extra 10cm step.

Worked: a pattern asks for 3¼ yards at 60in. That is 3.25 x 0.9144 = 2.972m, so 3.0m on length alone. Add 1.6 per cent for the narrower bolt and you get 3.02m, which rounds to 3.1m. At an indicative pound a metre you have spent an extra 10p to remove the only real risk in the calculation. That is the whole argument of this site in one line.

The other trap with imported patterns is that the fabric named on the envelope may not be sold here under that name at all. How to shop fabric online without regret covers matching a pattern's fabric recommendation to what a UK shop actually stocks.

Nap, one-way prints and pattern repeat: when to add 10–25 per cent

Everything so far assumes you can rotate a pattern piece 180 degrees and nobody will notice. Often you cannot. Here is when, and how much to add.

Nap: 15–25 per cent

Nap is a raised surface with a direction — velvet, velour, corduroy, moleskin, fleece, brushed cotton, faux fur, suedette. Run your hand up and down it and one direction feels smooth, the other rough. Worse, the two directions reflect light differently, so a sleeve cut upside-down will read as a different colour under a ceiling light. Every piece must be cut the same way up, which kills the interlocking layout, so add 15 per cent for a light nap and 25 per cent for a deep pile like jumbo cord or fur.

If your pattern envelope has a "with nap" column, it has already done this for you — use that figure and add nothing further. Corduroy is the everyday case, and the different wale weights behave quite differently under the scissors; is corduroy warm covers needlecord against jumbo cord. Fleece is the other, and it is more forgiving than it looks — see polar fleece vs anti-pill fleece.

One-way prints: 10–20 per cent

Trees, houses, animals, text, anything with a top and a bottom. Same problem as nap, slightly less severe because you can sometimes hide an inverted facing. Add 10 per cent for a small scattered motif, 20 per cent for a large obviously oriented one.

Stripes and checks: 10–15 per cent

Vertical stripes cost little. Horizontal stripes and checks cost more because you must match across every seam, which means sliding pieces up the cloth until the lines agree. Add 10 per cent for a stripe under 5cm, 15 per cent for a large check. Tartan is the extreme version and it deserves its own method — the matching technique is set out in what to make with tartan fabric.

Stripes and checks: 10–15 per cent

Vertical stripes cost little. Horizontal stripes and checks cost more because you must match across every seam, which means sliding pieces up the cloth until the lines agree. Add 10 per cent for a stripe under 5cm, 15 per cent for a large check. Tartan is the extreme version and it deserves its own method — the matching technique is set out in what to make with tartan fabric.

Large repeats: add one repeat per matched piece

The precise version: for each major piece you need to match, add one full pattern repeat. A dress with a front, a back and two sleeves that all need to line up, in a fabric with a 24cm repeat, needs roughly 4 x 24cm = 0.96m extra — call it a metre. The quick version, if you cannot face that: add 10 per cent under a 15cm repeat, 25 per cent over.

Costume and cosplay work runs into all of these at once, usually with a deadline attached. The fabric choices and the quantities for armour bases, capes and full builds are broken down in best fabric for cosplay costumes.

The safety margin rule, and why cheap fabric changes the calculus

The rule, first: add 10 per cent or 20cm, whichever is greater. For curtains, round the total up to the next half metre instead.

Now the part nobody else can tell you. Every other fabric blog on the internet teaches you to shave the layout — rotate this piece, cut the facing from the scrap, squeeze into 1.9m instead of 2.1m. That advice exists because those blogs are written by people buying at £12 to £25 a metre, where 20cm of insurance costs £2.40 to £5.00 and it genuinely is worth an hour of tessellating.

At around a pound a metre, 20cm of insurance costs 20 pence. Twenty pence against the risk of a wasted cut, a wasted afternoon, and a garment you cannot finish because the shop has sold out of that colourway. There is no version of that trade that favours shaving. Buy the extra. If you do not use it, it becomes pockets, a bag lining, a facing, bias binding, test seams for a stitch you have not tried, or a toile of the bodice before you commit — and a toile is worth more than 20p of anyone's money.

The same logic runs through the whole £1 fabric range: at that price point the correct behaviour is to over-buy slightly, cut confidently, and treat mistakes as tuition rather than tragedy.

Three projects, costed end to end

Metreage is only half an answer. Here is what three complete projects actually cost, fabric and haberdashery together. Haberdashery prices are indicative at the time of writing and vary widely; fabric is costed at an indicative £1 a metre.

1. A-line summer dress, UK size 16, cotton lawn at 150cm

• Fabric 2.0m — £2.00
• Invisible zip, 55cm — £1.50
• Fusible interfacing, 0.25m — £0.75
• Thread, one reel — £1.50
• Total: £5.75

A comparable cotton summer dress on the high street sits somewhere around £25 to £35, indicative at the time of writing. The fabric is 35 per cent of your total here, which tells you something important: once fabric is cheap, haberdashery becomes the dominant cost, and buying zips and thread in multiples is where the next saving lives.

2. Lined pencil-pleat curtains, 150cm track, 220cm drop

• Main fabric 7.5m at 150cm — £7.50
• Lining 7.1m — £7.10
• Pencil pleat tape, 3m — £4.50
• Curtain hooks, 30 — £2.00
• Thread, two reels — £3.00
• Total: £24.10

A ready-made lined pencil-pleat pair at that size is indicatively £60 to £120. This is the project where home sewing still wins by a mile, because ready-made curtains are priced on fabric area and you have just bought fabric area at cost. The full derivation of the 7.5m — fullness, widths, cut drop — is in the curtain calculator guide.

3. Six cushion covers, 45cm, envelope back

• Fabric 3.0m at 150cm — £3.00
• Thread, one reel — £1.50
• Pads reused from the old covers — £0.00
• Total: £4.50, or 75p a cushion

No zips, no fastenings, six straight seams each. This is the cheapest possible way to change how a room looks, and it is the project we would point any nervous beginner at first — and, incidentally, the highest-margin thing on most stalls, as sewing projects to sell at craft fairs UK sets out.

Where to go from here

If you have a metreage and need a fabric, the seasonal guides are the fastest route in: autumn fabrics UK for the cord, flannel and jersey end of the year, and when to start Christmas sewing for the projects that need a run-up. October is costume season, which means best fabric for Halloween costumes and, if the deadline is closer than that, easy Halloween sewing projects.

And if what you actually have is a single metre and an evening, what you can make with 1 metre of fabric is the shortest distance between a cut of cloth and a finished thing. Browse all our fabric when you know your number.