“How Much Fabric” reference cards

Gwen from After the Dress (and now Gwyn Hug) is now offering her popular “How Much Fabric” reference tables printed on plastic wallet cards. If you’ve ever found fabulous fabric while out shopping and then thought, “I’d love to make a shirt from this. I wonder how much I’d need?”, then these cards are what you need.

Her tables show the average amount of fabric needed to make different types of clothing and help take the guesswork out of buying fabric. In order to come up with these averages, she researched the yardage requirements on over 2000 patterns.

There is a separate card showing the average yardage for a different type of garment: skirts, pants, tops, dresses, and jackets. Within each table, the yardage requirements are broken down by:

–Garment size
–Type of cut (minimum, average, and maximum), along with line drawings showing examples of styles that fit these categories.
–Fabric width (45″ and 60″)

There is an additional “safety margin” table on each card showing “for several different amounts of add-on to the average, what percentage of the patterns that were used to build the table can be made with that new amount of fabric.”

The credit card size means that they fit easily in your wallet so you’ll have them with you when you need them.

You can purchase the whole set of “How Much Fabric” reference cards from GwynHug. Just $14.95 buys you the set of 5 cards.

[photo from After the Dress]

Technorati Tags: sewing, supplies, review, How Much Fabric, shopping, yardage, estimate

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Whether you celebrate Flag Day (June 14 in the United States, it honors the day in 1777 that the American flag was officially adopted) or just want to do a flag unit study, there are lots of interesting flags around the world that you can talk about.

For example, did you know there’s one flag that isn’t a rectangle? The flag of Nepal is the only national flag that isn’t quadrilateral (Switzerland and Vatican City both have flags that are square). Nepal’s flag is shaped like two stacked triangles, which represent the Himalayan Mountains, as well as the two main national religions, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Several flags feature animals, mostly lions, bears and eagles. Two flag feature dragons. The flag of Bhutan has a representation of a Druk, a mythical thunder dragon, while the flag of Wales has a Welsh dragon.

Paraguay is the only country recognized by the United Nations that has a flag that is different on the front and back. The flag has red, white and blue horizontal stripes, with the nation’s coat of arms on the front and the seal of the treasury on the back. (Oregon is the only US state with a flag that is different on the front and back. The front shows a seal with an eagle, 33 stars for its number in the union, and the words “state of Oregon” and the date it was admitted, 1859. The back has a picture of a beaver.)

The flag of Denmark, known as the Dannebrog, is the oldest continuously used flag in the world. Legend has it the flag fell from the sky during a battle in 1219 in present-day Estonia, helping the Danish to an unexpected victory. Because of that, it was adopted as the national flag and has been in use for more than 800 years. Denmark’s flag is celebrated on June 15 each year, called Valdemar’s Day after the king leading the crusade where the flag allegedly appeared.

Purple is a rare color on national flags because it was historically expensive to produce. The only flags that use it (and it’s sometimes hard to see) are Dominica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico and Spain. The Wiphala flag of Bolivia also contains purple.

There’s a fun page on Wikipedia that shows different flags arranged by design, so you can see all the tricolor flags, all the flags with stars, triangles, people and more. You can also look at flags by color.

If this has piqued your interest, maybe you’ll want to learn more about vexillology, the study of the history, design and symbolism of flags.

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