There are mathematical formulas available for calculating the woven fabric consumption for garment manufacturing. CAD is mostly used to create patterns to estimate fabric consumption. But if you are not in a situation to use CAD for calculation, you can find out the woven fabric consumption by making manual patterns of the garment design and making sample patterns.
While using manual markers to calculate fabric consumption, it is important to use the fabric width as much as possible. Remember that the actual consumption may differ from the actual consumption rate.
How to calculate woven fabric consumption using formulas?
Steps
1: Identify all the components of a garment
2: List out the components on a sheet of paper to avoid mistakes
3: Take measurements in the same unit.
4: Measure the length and breadth of the pieces.
5: Measure seam allowances in width and lengthwise.
6: Include folding width also in measurement.
7: Identify the number of parts and the number of layers required for a piece of garment.
8: By following the below formula, calculate the rectangle areas of all components of a garment:
Area of each component: length*width*number of components
9: Sum up all component areas.
10: Convert the number to meters
11: Add a percentage of consumption for the parts that comes during production like the end bits, edge loss, side loss and other fabric defect areas. Standard wastage allowance is 10%.
Therefore:
Total fabric consumption in length is: (Total area of garment components/fabric width) * Wastage
Here is an example:
Imagine we need to calculate the woven fabric required for a formal shirt. It has,
4 plies for sleeve cuff
1 for collar
2 layers
Cuff length =25 cm + seam allowance 2 cm = 27 cm
Cuff width = 6 cm + seam allowance 2 cm = 8 cm
Area of cuff panel = 27 * 8 sq. cm
Area of all cuff panels for a short = 27*8*4 sq. cm = 864 sq. cm
In meters = 0.00864 sq. meters
Consider, Total calculated area of all woven garment components = 1.68 sq meters
Also consider fabric width = 1.2 meter, and wastage is 10%
Therefore, total consumption = (1.68/1.2)*10%
= (1.68/1.2)*1.10
= 1.54 meters
Calculate the woven fabric consumption for shirts here
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