Amount of Fabric Needed for Suit and Pants

Originally Posted by OxxfordSJLINY

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How many yards or meters of fabric does a vest require, Chris?

measure the length from the shoulder at the neck down the front to the bottom at the point. add one inch. thats the minimum yardage for a vest.

Update- How much for a large man's jacket (size 50+) in a fabric with pattern and patch pockets? 3 meters?

What about the width? Is the width of the fabric standardized as I never heard the width mentioned?

Originally Posted by calvinloke

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What about the width? Is the width of the fabric standardized as I never heard the width mentioned?

Yes- standard.

Originally Posted by Cary Grant

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Yes- standard.

But there are more than one standard widths. Most suitings will be 60" or 150 cm wide. Some speciality tweeds and linens will be 30" wide or 75 cm.

Originally Posted by Manton

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But there are more than one standard widths. Most suitings will be 60" or 150 cm wide. Some speciality tweeds and linens will be 30" wide or 75 cm.

True- good clarification.

I'm around 5 feet 4. Fairly skinny. Around 110lbs. Would 3.5 yards be enough for a 2-piece?

Sorry but I don't understand the reasoning behind this kind of questions, you'll be bringing this cloth to a tailor anyway, so why don't you ask him?
Or are you buying before even having chosen the tailor? I would advise against this.

Originally Posted by calvinloke

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I'm around 5 feet 4. Fairly skinny. Around 110lbs. Would 3.5 yards be enough for a 2-piece?

More than enough.

Originally Posted by pabloj

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Or are you buying before even having chosen the tailor? I would advise against this.
Why?

Originally Posted by apropos

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Why?

you want to work with your tailor,not at cross purposes.

Originally Posted by Manton

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But there are more than one standard widths. Most suitings will be 60" or 150 cm wide. Some speciality tweeds and linens will be 30" wide or 75 cm.

When it is 30" wide it is called single width and you need to double the yardage. If you buy four yards at 60" wide you need 8 yards of 30" single width goods.

Some silks are woven in single width.

Originally Posted by calvinloke

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I'm around 5 feet 4. Fairly skinny. Around 110lbs. Would 3.5 yards be enough for a 2-piece?

That is enough for a 3 piece.

Interesting. It seems this term, "the whole nine yards" is a bastard child : )

I once went to a "dress-up-medival-festival" with a girlfriend in southern california. No, I didn't dress up. Her friend mentioned that the term came from the nine yards of cloth needed to create the old-school wool/cloth kilt-overall-scottish-look.

I didn't even question it at that point because he told me the night before while drinking vodka... it was a no-brainer.

Anyway... here's a little food for thought. It someone can answer the question - please do:

"Dear Cecil:

No opinions, no made up stories about wedding veils, coal, suits, or brass tacks. Based on discussions with my grandfathers, both World War II veterans, and confirmed by several military sources, here is the definitive answer for where "the whole nine yards" came from. The whole nine yards refers to the length of one ammunition belt from a belly-gunner's machine gun. When a target was overly resilient and the gunner was forced to expend all his ammunition to bring it down, it was said to have taken the "whole nine yards." Also, when loading up for a mission that was going to be particularly dangerous, gunners would refer to bringing the "whole nine yards," as they would need quite a bit of ammunition to complete the mission safely. --Ian McDonald, New York

Cecil replies:

You're not dragging me into this one again. To quote Evan Morris, the Word Detective (www.word-detective.com): "'The whole nine yards' first cropped up in print in the mid-1960s. . . . Even if machine gun belts really were 27 feet long in WWII, why has the phrase 'the whole nine yards' not been found in a single published account of that very well-documented war?"

— Cecil Adams"

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...ole-nine-yards

How much fabric does it take to make a 3/4 coat?