How To Convert Linear Yard Weight In Ounces to GSM

Recently we were developing some new fabric for an upcoming limited-edition undershirt line project, and received a Linear Yard weight from one of our knitting mill suppliers.

Sometimes, weight of the fabric is provided in ounces per one yard. This is normally known as linear yard weight, though you should check with your fabric supplier to see if the weight is provided in linear yard or square yard.

A square yard is 36″ x 36″. A linear yard is just 36″ x the width of the actual fabric roll.  So, if the width of your fabric roll is 60″, your linear yard is 36″ x 60″.

One main standard unit of fabric weight measurement is grams per square meter, which is often abbreviated as GSM.

We knew what target weight we were shooting for in GSM, so needed to figure out how to convert the weight they provided in Linear Yard to GSM. 

We first tried Googling for an answer, but we couldn’t find any sites that explained what we were looking for.

So we created our own (hopefully accurate) conversion.

Linear yard weight can be converted to Grams per Square Meter easily. We provide below step by step instructions to achieve the conversion.

Assumptions

The assumptions and units of conversions used in the example given below are as follows (Illustrative example only):

(A) Width of the example fabric is taken as 68 inches.
(B) One ounce is equal to 28.3495 grams.
(C) One yard is equal to 36 inches.
(D) One inch is equal to 0.0254 meters.
(E) One square yard is equal to 0.836127 square meters
(F) One inch is equal to 0.027778 yards which is equal to 1/36.
(G) Let us assume that the linear yard weight for the example fabric is 7 ounces.

Step 1:

First of all, we need to convert this weight of 7 ounces to grams.

As one ounce is equal to 28.3495 grams, 7 ounces become 198.4465 grams.

Step 2:

Convert the area provided in inches to yard.

Since the dimensions of the fabric are 68″ X 36″, the area in square yards can be derived as (68 X 36)/(36 X 36) = 1.88889.

Step 3:

Now, the next step is to convert the total area from square yards to square meters. One square yard is equal to 0.836127 square metres.

Therefore, the total area in square meters comes out to 1.88889 X 0.836127 = 1.57935 sqm

Step 4:

For easy calculation, we need to convert the above total area in square meters to the area in square meters for only one square meter.

This figure can be derived by 1/1.57935 = 0.63317 (more simply, one square meter is 63.3% of our original 1.579 total sqm)

Step 5:

This is the final step of conversion.

To arrive at grams per square meters, we need to multiply the weight in grams to the figure derived above.

This gives us 198.4465 X 0.633317 = 125.6505 grams per square meter.

So, 125.6505 GSM is the final answer in this particular example.

Converting Linear Yard Weights to GSM

This example can be used to easily convert the numbers from linear yard weight to grams per square meter.

Just change the fabric roll width (A) and the linear yard weight of the fabric in ounces (G) in the above example and follow the steps.