Conversion tables for quilting

[RussWilliams]

Hi, couldn't really figure where to post this, but here's my problem: My wife is becoming a quilter, so she wants to work/think in inches and common fractions(eighths, 16ths, etc.). She has a fancy sewing machine made somewhere in Europe (Sweden I think) that wants to express things in millimeters, so she asked me (being a computer nerd with a Masters degree in Math): can you make me a conversion table? So, has any clever person come up with any appropriate tables? It's easy enough of course to generate tables using decimals, but I wondered if there was anything better.

[Dirtman]

Hi, couldn't really figure where to post this, but here's my problem: My wife is becoming a quilter, so she wants to work/think in inches and common fractions(eighths, 16ths, etc.). She has a fancy sewing machine made somewhere in Europe (Sweden I think) that wants to express things in millimeters, so she asked me (being a computer nerd with a Masters degree in Math): can you make me a conversion table? So, has any clever person come up with any appropriate tables? It's easy enough of course to generate tables using decimals, but I wondered if there was anything better.

Russ:

You can get a table for drill bit sizes in proper fractions to mm but most only go to one inch. Sounds like a job for Excel, which will be simple enough to do, as there are exactly 25.4 mm/inch.

I have another suggestion . . . get her a metric sewing tape. You might need to do a couple of conversions, say 4" squares to mm, but then the tape will match the sewing machine. Constantly having to convert, or even look at a chart, will quickly get monotonous.

[RussWilliams]

@Dirtman: Brilliant! In fact, she already has a tape measure that has both kinds of units on it. She just never paid attention to the metric part. Thanks loads for the idea!