Quilt Binding Calculator — Strips & Yardage for Straight-Grain Binding
Enter your finished quilt size, the width you cut your binding strips (2.5″ is common), your fabric's usable width, and a join allowance (10″ is typical for joining ends and turning corners). The calculator returns the number of strips and the yardage to buy.
What this calculator determines
It calculates the number of straight-grain binding strips and the fabric yardage to bind a quilt from quilt size, cut width, fabric width, and join allowance.
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Examples
Throw quilt, 2.5″ strips
60″ × 72″ quilt, 2.5″ cut, 42″ fabric, 10″ join
Calculation
- Perimeter: 2 × (60 + 72) = 264″
- Total: 264 + 10 = 274″
- Usable per strip: 42 − 0.5 = 41.5″
- Strips: ceil(274 ÷ 41.5) = 7
- Fabric: 7 × 2.5 = 17.5″
- Yards: 17.5 ÷ 36 = 0.49 → buy 0.5 yd
7 strips — buy 0.5 yards
Assumptions & Conventions
- Straight-grain strips
- Strips are cut straight across the width of fabric (straight-grain), not on the bias.
- Usable fabric width
- The default usable fabric width is 42″ and can be changed to match your fabric.
- Purchase rounding
- Purchase yardage is rounded up to the next 1/8 yard.