Start by determining the length and width of each piece:
Experiment with different lengths and widths. Keep in mind that if pieces get too wide, your rug may start to curl.

Calculate how many pieces you will need of each color:
Determine how many holes will need to be prodded. This can be done by counting the holes or by multiplying the number of holes in the width by the number of holes in the length. Example: If you are covering an area that is 16 holes wide by 30 holes long: 16*30 = 480. This tells us that the 16X30 area has 480 holes. Since each piece of fabric will fill two holes, we need to divide 480 by 2 which means that 240 pieces of fabric are needed.

Calculate how many pieces you can get from each yard of fleece:
First, divide the width of your fabric by the width of your strips to see how many strips can be cut from the width of the fabric.
Example: Most fleece comes in 60” widths, so if you are cutting strips ½” wide, you would divide 60 by .5. This tells us you would be able to get about 120 strips. Unless you draw lines and make every cut exactly ½”, you probably are not going to get 120 strips. I usually plan 118 strips and that gives me a little fabric to work with.
Next, divide the length of your strips by 36 to see how many pieces can be cut from each strip of fabric.
Example: One yard of fabric is 36” long. If you cut a ½” wide strip from the fleece, it would be ½” x 36”. If you are cutting 3” pieces, you should be able to get twelve ½”x3” pieces from every strip. Again, unless you cut everything perfectly, this probably won’t happen, so I usually plan to get 11 pieces, just to give a little extra fabric to work with.

Based on this you would than multiply 118 X 11 which means that you could get approximately 1298 pieces per yard.

Calculate how many yards are required for pieces:
If you are making a rug that requires 3000 pieces and you know that you can get about 1298 pieces per yard, you would take 3000 and divide it by 1298. The answer, 2.31 is the number of yards needed to get 3000 pieces.

Calculate how much fleece will be needed for binding.
Measure the length of the edges of your rug and add an extra 2 inches for overlap.
Example: If you are making a 4’X6” rug, you will need 2 pieces that are 1”X48 ½” and 2 pieces that are 1”X72 ½”.
The total length needed is 48 ½ + 48 ½ +72 ½ + 72 ½ = 242”.
Take the total length and divide it by 36. (One yard of fabric is 36” long.)
242 divided by 36 = 6.72
Next divide 6.72 by the width of your fabric. Most fleece is sold in 60” widths so we will use that for our example.
6.72 divided by 60 = .11 yards.

Add the yards required for pieces to the yards required for the binding:
2.31 + .11 = 2.42.
I like to round the fabric requirement up, so in this case I would purchase 2.5 yards of fabric.