Fabric Conversions
Converting a fabric measurement has two halves, and only the first is arithmetic. One yard is exactly 0.9144 metres and one inch is exactly 25.4 millimetres, so the numbers convert without error. What does not convert cleanly is the cloth: a pattern written in yards was written for a roll sold by the yard, and those rolls are usually narrower than the metric ones.
Converters
Yards to metres
Convert a pattern written in yards to metres, with the common cut lengths tabulated.
Metres to yards
Convert metres to yards and to the eighth-yard increments a US cutting counter uses.
Fabric width converter
Pattern written for one bolt width, fabric bought at another — work out the equivalent length.
Fabric GSM calculator
g/m², oz/yd², running-yard ounces and momme — plus the weight of an unlabelled fabric from a swatch.
The ratios, exactly
Every term used on these pages is defined in the glossary.
These are definitions rather than measurements. The international yard and pound agreement of 1959 fixed the yard at 0.9144 metres exactly, which makes the inch exactly 25.4 millimetres. Neither figure is rounded, so no conversion on this site introduces error of its own — the only imprecision in any answer comes from your shop's cutting increment.
| From | To | Multiply by | Exact? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yards | Metres | 0.9144 | Yes |
| Metres | Yards | 1.0936133 | Recurring |
| Inches | Centimetres | 2.54 | Yes |
| Centimetres | Inches | 0.3937008 | Recurring |
| Feet | Centimetres | 30.48 | Yes |
The recurring ones are recurring in one direction only, which is a useful thing to notice: if a conversion looks like it should be reversible with the same factor and is not, that is why. Going from 115 cm to 150 cm fabric cuts your length by about a quarter, but going back from 150 cm to 115 cm adds about a third.
Where the trade labels disagree with the maths
Roll widths are the part that catches people. The same cloth is labelled in both systems, both labels are rounded, and the two roundings do not agree. A fabric sold as "55 inch" is 139.7 cm and will be labelled 140; a fabric sold as "54 inch" is 137.16 cm and will be labelled 137. Those are two different fabrics that are routinely treated as one.
| Sold as | Also labelled | Exact | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36 in | 90 cm | 91.44 cm | Quilting cottons, older dress fabrics |
| 44 in | 112 cm | 111.76 cm | Standard quilting cotton |
| 45 in | 115 cm | 114.3 cm | Dressmaking cottons, commercial patterns |
| 54 in | 137 cm | 137.16 cm | Upholstery, curtain lining |
| 55 in | 140 cm | 139.7 cm | Curtain and furnishing fabrics |
| 60 in | 150 cm | 152.4 cm | Knits, wide dress fabrics |
| 108 in | 274 cm | 274.32 cm | Wide-back quilting fabric |
Over a single width the discrepancy is under 3 cm and rarely matters. Over four joined widths in a made-to-measure curtain it is more than a centimetre of finished width per seam, which is the sort of error nobody spots until the curtains are hung.
Converting length is not converting fabric
This is the failure worth guarding against. Take a pattern calling for 3 yards, convert it to 2.75 metres, round up to 2.8, and buy 2.8 metres of a fabric that happens to be 44 inches wide — and you have bought roughly half the cloth the pattern expects, because it assumed a wider roll.
The fabric width converter handles that second half by converting the area rather than the length. It also says when the conversion cannot be trusted, which is more often than most such tools admit: a directional print, a nap, or any single pattern piece wider than the narrower roll breaks the area equivalence outright.
For a project rather than a pattern, the fabric calculators take width and length together from the start, so no conversion step is needed. The exact ratios used here, and where each one comes from, are on the methodology page.