One of the most frustrating things about making and designing quilts is figuring out what size to make them. There are no standard sizes and everyone has their own opinion on how large to make them, so every source you check will have different sizes for the same quilts.
If you have access to the bed you’re making the quilt for you can customize the quilt size to the bed. Grab your measuring tape and take some measurements!
First you need to know the size of the mattress. If you can’t measure the actual mattress, check out the diagram below for the common mattress sizes.
After you have the mattress dimensions you have to decide how wide you want the quilt. How much extra drop do you want on the sides? At a minimum you’ll want to cover the thickness of the mattress, but you’ll also have to decide how far down beyond that you want the quilt to drop. Do you want it to come down to the base of the bed or nearly to the floor? It’s totally a matter of opinion and how you want it to look. The equation for the width would be:
Quilt Width = Mattress Width + (Mattress Depth x 2) + (Additional Drop x 2)
Then it’s time to figure out how long you want the quilt. You can use the same equation as above but switch the width for the length.
Do you also plan on tucking in your pillows? If not, you don’t need to do any additional calculations for the length! If you do, you’ll need to add somewhere between another 12″-18″ to the top.
One last thing to consider. How dense will your quilting design be? The quilting can shrink the overall size of the quilt, so if you’ll be using dense quilting you should add an additional 5% to both length and width.
Yay! The hard part’s done (or at least I think getting the dimensions right are the hard part)!
Don’t want to figure it out for yourself? These are the measurements I try to aim for whenever I plan out a quilt design. Depending on the design the final measurements may or may not match this exactly, but I generally try to make these my minimum. I’d rather have my quilt a little too big than a little too small!
Do you have to make your quilt to these sizes? No! The best part about making your own stuff is being able to customize it, so you can make your quilts however big or small you want!
