Strips from Fabric Calculator

Clean strips start before the first cut

If you're pushing hard to cut, the blade is dull. Replace it. A fresh rotary blade glides through fabric and gives you clean edges that sew accurately. A dull blade drags, shifts layers, and gives you strips that are wider at one end. Stack no more than 4 layers — beyond that the blade drifts.

Trim selvages first. Selvage fabric is tighter, won't press the same, and puckers in seams. After trimming, measure what you actually have — most bolts yield about 42" usable, but don't assume. Square up the raw edge before you cut anything, aligning the ruler with the fold, not the selvage.

Crosswise (WOF) strips are standard for piecing. Lengthwise strips have almost no stretch, which makes them the better choice for borders and sashing — but they eat more yardage. One yard of 42" WOF fabric gives you about 14 strips at 2.5" wide or 10 strips at 3.5" wide. This calculator works out the exact count for your dimensions — and it works in both directions: tell it the strips you need and it'll give you the yardage to buy, or tell it the yardage you have and it'll count the strips you can cut.