how do i know how much fabric to buy for a baby quilt?

It's going to depend on how big the quilt is, how wide the fabric you're going to buy is, and how big the squares are. I make my baby quilts about 60x60" square; the more usual crib sizes are in the neighborhood of 36-45" x 50-60". I prefer the larger quilt because it can be used much, much longer by the child.

I did a calculation for someone else not so long ago -- this was for a much larger quilt, but you can see the basic method here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201311...

Here's a calculator for fabrics: http://search.quiltshops.com/calculator/calculator... and a tutorial: http://www.quilterscache.com/StartQuiltingPages/st...

If you'd like to give us (or send me directly) a sketch of your quilt, with size of the quilt and size and color of the blocks, I'll help you out.

Right now, I'll assume that the quilt will be 45x54 finished size, with no borders and no binding, and you'll be using two colors of fabric, A and B, and a 3" finished size square. So you will have 15 blocks across (45/3) and 18 down. Each block, assuming you're using the standard 1/4" seam allowance, will need to be cut to 3.5" x 3.5" because there's a 1/4" seam allowance all the way around. So you're going to need 270 squares of fabric, equally divided between colors A and B, or 135 squares of each color.

So a fabric that's nominally 45" wide will have more like 42" of useable width because it's going to shrink some and you can't use the selvages (the 'factory edge') for the quilt -- they pucker like crazy usuallly.

42" wide fabric/3.5" wide blocks mean that you can get 12 blocks out of a width of fabric.

You'll need 135/12 = 11.25 strips to cut the blocks, assuming each is cut perfectly accurately (which is rarely possible for most of us!). So we actually need 12 strips 3.5" wide at a minimum to cut the blocks for each color... that's 42" total length of each fabric at a bare minimum, or just under 45", 1.25 yards. Now personally, I wouldn't be comfortable buying just that much. The fabric will shrink as you prewash it, and I can guarantee I'd make a few cutting mistakes, so I'd buy a minimum of a yard and a half, and probably more like 1 3/4 yards of each fabric.

In addition to the fabric for the pieced top, you'll need fabric for backing (I cut my backings at least 4" bigger than the finished quilt, so you'd need a piece of fabric 49x57" or roughly 1 5/8 yards of 60" wide fabric. You'll also need fabric for binding around the edge... let's say 1" wide finished width, which will take about 5/8 yards for a "french fold" binding. And, of course, you'll need batting as big as the batting.

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RE:

how do i know how much fabric to buy for a baby quilt?

i have never made a quilt before and i've been reading up on how to make a very simple baby quilt. its just going to be solid squares of different fabrics in a checkerboard pattern. i have never bought fabric before so i need some advice on how big to make the quilt and how much fabric to buy.

figure out the size of your quilt first. You will need one piece of fabric for the bottom to it, plus different fabrics for the top. then strips of fabric to make the binding to go around it. Best bet for a new quilter is to get a pattern to follow