What is a Fat Quarter vs. a Quarter Yard of Fabric?

Fat quarters are in every quilt store. They're also in a lot of the larger chain stores and they come folded up like this and they're irresistible little pieces of fabric that we all just have to buy because they're only a couple bucks a fat quarter. And what's the hurt with a couple of dollars here and there. In fact, I've told people before that just like white food doesn't have any calories in it. Well, a fat quarter doesn't count as buying fabric. When my husband says, "Did you buy any fabric today honey?" "No, I just bought a fat quarter." So what's the difference between a fat quarter and a quarter yard of fabric? Well, that's a good question. A quarter yard of fabric goes across the entire length of the fabric. So it will be approximately 42 to 44 inches wide by nine inches across. A fat quarter on the other hand is half the distance typically of a full yard or a full piece of fabric. It should be 21 inches across actually. Yes, that's my that's the right way. Sometimes it's hard to see the selvage. It's 21 inches across in that neighborhood because fabric can vary from about 40 to 44 inches, typically 42 to 44 inches when it's on a bolt. This one just happens to be a little bit less. It's also, if you put it on your cutting mat, you'll see that it's right at 18 inches in the width. This one was cut a little bit generously. I got lucky. I got an extra inch. So why would I want to buy a fat quarter versus a quarter yard or vice versa? And does it even matter? Well, it does matter because this is only half of the length. If I'm am cutting strips for quilting, if I'm needing a lot of pieces for quilting, if I'm doing lots of blocks with the same patches in the block, like a lot of rectangles, a lot of squares. I'm better off getting my yardage because I can cut across and then cut my pieces this way. And I'm actually getting double, the amount of fabric per strip, as opposed to the fat quarter. I also want to buy yardage when I'm doing binding, when I'm doing borders because I have the length across or the width across for my binding, and I'm on the cross grain there. If I'm doing borders, I want longer yardage so that I can cut them on the straight of grain. And again, it's double the fabric. Fat quarters are great if you're doing scrap quilts, if you're doing quilts with limited numbers, if you just want to have a little bit for accents. I like to have it in my stash for applique. There's a lot of good reasons for it. It's a good inexpensive way to sample fabrics. Or if you have a nice stash going just to get a few pieces that'll pop, whatever you might be working on to keep your stash a little more current in your quilting, a little more current but keep in mind that when you're looking at your pattern read the directions and find out if it says you need a quarter of a yard or a fat quarter because while it's technically the same amount of fabric, if I were to cut this in half and fold it over it would be the same amount of fabric that's in a fat quarter, but it's in a different type of format. It's a different, a different way of using the fabric. So it's important to know that yes, they both equal the same amount of fabric but how you use them are a little bit different.