Measure twice, cut once

Fabric Widths
Originally uploaded by Houkje London

One of the challenges I faced when I moved to the UK, was figuring out how inches converted into centimeters and the other way round. Rule of thumb: 1 inch = 2,5 centimetres. Brilliant, I knew that! However, when I asked the guy at the fabric shop last weekend how wide the fabric was and he told me it was 59 inches, I drew a blank. It was probably the excitement of looking at the gorgeous fabric that left me at a complete loss as to how much that was in centimetres. When he told me he didn't know either, I was a bit surprised.

If only I had remembered the conversion table that I had in my bag, it would have been a lot easier (especially since even though he had no idea how many centimeters we were talking about when we were discussing the width, when I asked him to cut off 4 metres for me, he did so without hesitation). Makes you wonder. Well, me anyway.

So I thought I'd better share the following information with you, although I don't know if there are more people out there suffering from brain freeze as soon as numbers come up in the fabric shop (I always feel a slight black-out at the check-out counter, for example...)

Let's have a look at the yellow example in the top line. Suppose you want to make a skirt, and because you're used to buying 150cm wide fabric, you knew you would need 1 metre (= 100 centimetres, I LOVE metric!) for that. Now you're in the fabric shop, and you see the most gorgeous fabric, but it's only 90cm wide. Before you let panic take over, a quick look at the conversion table would tell you that you would need 160cm (=1.6mtr) for your skirt! Cool eh?