Calico & Muslin Fabric

These are the two cottons that quietly hold a sewing room together. Neither is glamorous and neither is expensive, but between them they cover the test garment you make before the real one, the backing for a quilt, the swaddle for a new baby and the cloth you strain jam through. Knowing which is which, and which weight to buy, saves a surprising amount of trouble.

If you're following an American pattern, read this first

This trips people up constantly, so it's worth being direct about it. In the UK, calico is the firm, plain, usually unbleached cotton you make a test garment from, and muslin is the open, gauzy cloth used for swaddles and cheesecloth. In the United States those words work differently: American sewists call the test garment itself a "muslin", and the cloth they make it from is what we call calico. So when a US pattern, book or video tells you to "make a muslin first", what you want from this page is calico, not the muslin. Buy the muslin and you'll end up with something far too soft and open to tell you anything useful about the fit.

Choosing calico

Our calico runs from a light cotton lawn weight through to a heavy calico, and the useful principle is to match the weight of the calico roughly to the weight of the fabric you're planning to use. A toile made in heavy calico won't tell you much about how a drapey blouse is going to hang, and a fine calico won't show you where a structured jacket needs easing. Loom state calico comes straight off the loom with its sizing still in it, which is why it feels stiff at first; that softens with washing. Washed and bleached calico are there when you want the cloth for the finished item rather than the rehearsal.

Calico takes dye and print well, which is part of why it turns up so often in craft work, and it's a common choice for tote bags, aprons, quilting backs, bunting, banners and photography backdrops as well as toiles.

Making a toile

A toile is a rehearsal, and treating it as one saves time. There's no need to pre-wash calico you're only going to cut apart, but if the calico is going to become the finished garment then wash it first, because unwashed cotton can shrink noticeably on its first hot wash. Mark your fitting changes straight onto the toile in pen as you go, then unpick it and use the pieces to correct your pattern. Buying a little extra is sensible either way.

Choosing muslin

Muslin is the light, open-weave cotton, and it's soft, breathable and quick to dry. That's what makes it the standard for baby swaddles, comforters and lightweight summer layers, and what makes it useful in the kitchen for straining, cheesemaking and jam. Our range includes bleached and unbleached muslins, Egyptian cotton muslins, a food standard muslin and some printed baby muslins. If you're buying for food use, check the individual product page, as not every muslin in the range is intended for it.

Cheesecloth is worth a word here too, because the names get used loosely. Cheesecloth, butter muslin and culinary muslin all describe much the same thing: a loose, open cotton cloth used for straining, jelly bags, wrapping cheese and covering food. In practice it's muslin bought for the kitchen rather than a separate cloth, and the food standard muslin in this collection is the one to look at if that's the job.

For a swaddle, a square somewhere around a metre a side is the usual finished size, with a narrow hem all round. If you'd like something with a little more substance for a newborn, our double gauze collection is worth a look, and there's more open, sheer cotton in the cotton voile and muslin collection.

Washing and shrinkage

Both cloths are cotton, and both can shrink on a first wash, loom state calico most of all. If the finished item will be washed, wash the fabric first and allow extra when you're working out how much to buy. Beyond that they're straightforward: a warm machine wash and a medium iron suits most of what's here, unless the individual product page or care label says otherwise.