How much yarn do I need?

There is nothing worse than running out of yarn before you're done with a project. Use this handy guide to help you calculate the amount of yarn you'll need. If you are not sure how many yards of yarn you have on a cone, you can read our Yarn Sizes page to help figure that out.

Once you have a project decided, you need to determine the length and sett of your warp. Remember to add in length for take-up, shrinkage, and loom waste.

For a rough calculation, multiply your desired width in inches by your ends per inch (sett), by the length of your warp in yards. You can use this to decide how many cones of yarn to buy or if you've already got enough at home.

For a balanced weave, I usually guess that I will use a little bit less yarn for my weft. For a more precise measure or an unbalanced weave, you will need to multiply your picks per inch by the length of your project in inches, by the width of your project in inches. You will then need to divide by 36 to get the answer in yards.

For a more precise calculation, you can download our handy warp calculation worksheet .