Fabric & Textiles Definition List

Cloth by Construction: Woven, Knitted, Felted, Crocheted

Before any fabric name means anything, its construction decides its behavior. Woven fabrics interlace warp and weft at right angles and hold their shape; knitted fabrics loop yarn into courses that stretch and recover; felt mats fibers together with heat, moisture and pressure until no yarn exists at all; crochet builds a fabric one loop at a time with a hook, closer to lace than to loom work in its openness. The terms on this page sort themselves along those lines. Canvas, denim, drill and gabardine are hard-wearing wovens, their diagonal or plain weaves chosen for strength. Flannel adds a brushed surface for warmth. Corduroy weaves in raised cords; damask weaves pattern into the cloth itself, visible as light and shadow in a single color; brocade raises the pattern with supplementary threads, historically in silk and metal.

Crepe twists its yarns until the surface pebbles; chintz glazes printed cotton; gingham weaves its checks in rather than printing them on — a distinction a buyer can test by looking at the back of the cloth. Fleece and felt serve opposite poles of warmth, one a soft knitted pile, the other the oldest fabric technology of all.

Pattern, Finish and the Working Terms

Some entries here are not fabrics but the knowledge around them. Bias is the diagonal direction of a woven cloth, where it stretches and drapes — cutting on the bias remakes a fabric's behavior. Interfacing is the hidden layer that gives collars, cuffs and waistbands their body. Batik is a wax-resist dyeing method whose crackled patterns name a cloth as much as a process. Jamdani is handloom weaving from Bengal in which the motif is woven in by hand, thread by thread. Fabric defects, also defined here, are the trade's quality vocabulary — the flaws inspectors grade cloth by. Learning fabric names together with these working terms is what turns a shopper into a specifier: you stop asking for something blue and start asking for a brushed cotton flannel, plain weave, yarn-dyed — and getting it.