How Much Yarn Do I Need for my Project?
Learn how to calculate how much yarn you need for a blanket, a sweater and for any project at all.
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How Much Yarn do I need?
Most patterns will give you estimates of how much yarn you need to complete your project, but if you are substituting for a different yarn or you want to make a different option in a pattern and the information isn’t provided, you can calculate just how much yarn you’ll need with a little maths.
This crochet technique to calculate your yarn can also be used for those larger scrap projects; no need to buy more – you can work out how much of your scrap you can use up too.
Read on to learn how to calculate how much yarn you need for you project…
1. Make Use of your Gauge Swatch
It’s well known that we should make a gauge or tension swatch to check our stitch size against the pattern to ensure that we will achieve the same size as the pattern designer, but we can also use our gauge swatch to calculate how much yarn we need to make our project too.
If you haven’t already made your gauge swatch, click here to make a sample swatch for the Rose Cardigan Crochet Along.
2. Calculate the Yarn Used Per Stitch
Once you have achieved gauge, you can measure the yarn used in 10 stitches to calculate the total amount of yarn needed to complete our project.
Materials Needed
- Gauge swatch
- Measuring tape
- Calculator (or good mental arithmetic)
How to calculate the length of yarn used in 1 stitch:
- Pinch or mark the yarn at the end of the last stitch worked
- Pull back 10 stitches and mark the yarn at the beginning of the first stitch
- Using a tape measure, measure the length between the start and end of the 10 stitches
- make a note if you are using cm or inches
- If using cm, divide the length by 10 to calculate the length of yarn needed per stitch
- Make a note of the length of yarn used in 1 stitch – we will need that measurement later.
3. How many stitches in the pattern?
Once you know what size you are making of the project, you can calculate the total number of stitches in the pattern.
Work your way through the pattern, noting the number of stitches used in each row (if the stitch count remains the same, simply multiply the stitch count by the number of rows).
Once you have the total number of stitches required to complete your project you can multiply the total number of stitches by the length of yarn used in 1 stitch and this will give you the total amount of yarn needed.
If you are making the Rose Crochet Cardigan, you can find the stitch counts for each size and variation in the main article by clicking the button below
4. How Many Skeins or Balls of yarn do you need?
Depending on how many stitches your pattern uses, you might have quite a large number – this number needs to be converted into skeins or balls of yarn so you know how many to purchase or check your yarn stash for.
Multiply the total number of stitches for the pattern by the length of yarn needed for 1 stitch.
This will number will then need to be divided as follows for the total length of yarn needed:
- If you’ve used centimetres to measure your stitch length, you’ll need to divide by 100 to get the number meters needed
- If you’ve used inches, you’ll need to divided by 36 to get the total number of yards needed
How Many Skeins or Balls of yarn do you need?
If you have chosen your yarn, check the yarn label to confirm how many yards/metres are in the ball.
Divide the total number of yards/metres needed by the number of yards/meters on the ball to confirm how many skeins or balls you need.
Now you know how much yarn you need, you can shop with confidence, or raid your stash to check how much yarn you need!
