Planning ribbon for grass dance fringe

[sookout sh'nob]

Does anyone have a good formula or method for planning this out ahead of time for your orders?

We're starting our "How to make a grass dance outfit" video projects next week! Should be awesome - we're doing ribbon, cloth strip, and yarn fringe. Not sure if we'll cover chainette, as I've never worked with it and we only have the three guys.

When I first started, no one in my family had made one before and we had to wing it - my yarn was bunched up really close together and it made it tough to sew. Live and learn eh.

At any rate, fringe calculation formulas or just et us know what you buy when you're shopping!

[Czechy]

I think 6 skeins of yarn is pretty typical for a man's outfit.
I have not done the cloth strips but I think there are some quilting sources that could tell you how much yardage to buy.

As far as the chainette, most of the sizes can be bought by the yard so that's just an easy matter of measuring how much you need.

As far as ribbon goes, I usually buy my ribbon on large, economical 100 yard spools as I also use it to fringe ladies shawls. So I don't feel bad having extra because it will get used in some future project.

First I sew the base item that will be fringed. Then I measure in inches how much linear space needs fringe. I get out my calculator and find out how many fringes of such-n-such width I will need. Then that number is multiplied by the desired length of the fringe pieces. That total gets divided by 36 (there are 36 inches in one yard) to find out how many yards of ribbon I need.

This gives me a total whether I use one color of fringe or multiple. But for example, if doing three colors in equal ammounts then your sum gets divided by 3.

Hope this makes since. I don't know of any easy chart to refer to since the permutations are endless. One just has to get the calculator out and measure and do some math.