Here’s a Way on Wednesday: Iron out a Fat Quarter

Because I am going to start doing a number of small scale sewing DIY projects for you soon I wanted to open that can of worms with a little bit on Fat Quarters. So that you understand the layout and where a Fat Quarter actually comes from, see the diagram below.

So, what is a Fat Quarter? Traditionally, a Fat Quarter is a 44″ x 36″  piece of material cut in to quarters making each quarter 18″x22″. Fat Quarter’s are most commonly used is in the quilting world where they generally use a quilt-weight cotton which in most cases will measure 44″ wide, but sometimes measures 42″ wide (which would make your Fat Quarter 18″x21″). There are also Fat Eigth’s, but I won’t get in to too much detail about them here. Getting Fat Quarters out of a yard of fabric is super easy, here is a tutorial to help you out.


So the main technique here is using your iron and simple folding to get your quarters measured evenly. If you need help squaring up your fabric before folding in to quarters, this is s pretty decent video on YouTube, How to Square Your Quilting Fabric. There are a lot of techniques on squaring fabric, some of which include using measuring tools etc. This is a great, simple method for doing this without extra tools.

Author: Molly Bermea
Hi! I'm the COLOURlovers Community Curator. I come from a family with five imaginative kids. My mom instilled creativity to the max and you can usually find us scheming together, figuring out new ways to sew, craft or build DIY projects. The core of my artistic bone is in the art of painting.