Fabric Cost Calculator
Zero Waste & No Sign-up: Estimate total fabric cost for your quilt project. Enter yardage requirements and price per yard to calculate material costs and stay within budget.
How to Use the Fabric Cost Calculator
Enter your quilt top dimensions, fabric and batting prices per yard, estimated thread cost, and optionally your labor hours and hourly rate. The tool estimates the yardage for the quilt top and backing automatically from the quilt size, then prices out the whole project.
Behind the estimate, the calculator allows 4 inches of overhang on every side, treats usable fabric width as one inch less than the stated width to account for selvages, and works out how many fabric panels are needed to span the quilt. Each yardage figure is rounded up to the next eighth of a yard, the way fabric is actually sold, and batting is calculated separately against your batting roll width.
All costs are rounded to the cent and summed into a single total: fabric plus batting plus thread plus labor. If you sell or commission quilts, try entering an honest hourly rate — for most quilts the labor line dwarfs the materials, which is useful evidence when pricing a finished piece.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much fabric does a queen-size quilt cost?
By this calculator's panel math a 90 x 108 inch queen needs roughly 19 to 20 yards between top and backing, so at 10 to 13 dollars per yard the fabric line alone runs about 200 to 260 dollars before batting, thread, and labor.
Why is the fabric estimate higher than my pattern states?
The tool prices the top as whole panels covering the quilt plus 4 inches of overhang per side — a deliberately safe ceiling. An efficiently pieced pattern can come in lower, so treat the figure as a budget envelope rather than a cutting list.
Should I include labor when pricing a quilt?
Yes. Enter your hours and an hourly rate and the calculator adds them to the total. Even at modest rates labor usually exceeds materials, which is why quilts priced on fabric alone are underpriced.