Fabric Definitions — definitions of fabrics, cloths, laces and textile materials from Apparel Search
Drill is a strong, durable cotton fabric with a strong bias — a diagonal — in the weave. It can be used unbleached, although it is more often bleached or dyed. Lighter weights are used in shirts, safari jackets, blouses, playwear and martial arts wear; khaki drill is made into uniforms, boatsail drill into sails, and drill is also made into pocket linings.
Drill is a strong, durable cotton fabric with a strong bias (diagonal) in the weave. It can be used unbleached, although it is more often bleached or dyed.
The lighter weights are used in such clothing items as shirts, safari jackets, blouses, playwear, and martial arts wear.
Khaki drill is made into uniforms; boatsail drill is made into sails for sailing craft and is unbleached; drill is also made into pocket linings.
Drill belongs to the family of cotton twills that clothed the industrial and military world — denim, chino, drill — and its place in the family is the heavy-duty middle. It is stronger and more pronounced in its diagonal than chino, less specialized in color and finish than denim, and sold in a ladder of weights that lets one fabric name cover shirt-weight cloth at one end and sailcloth at the other. The ladder explains drill's scattered list of uses, which looks miscellaneous until weight is considered: martial arts uniforms need a drill that withstands gripping and pulling; safari jackets need a mid-weight that holds pockets and belts; pocket linings need the thin end of the range, where the twill's strength survives at minimal bulk. Specifying drill without a weight is therefore only half a specification.
Drill is one of the cloths whose finish state is part of its identity. Unbleached drill keeps the natural cotton color and the lowest cost, and serves where appearance is secondary — sails in the boatsail grade, utility and lining work. Bleached drill gives a clean white ground for uniforms, medical and food-industry clothing and summer wear. Dyed drill, khaki above all, is the uniform cloth proper: colorfast, hard-wearing and cheap enough to issue at scale. All three are the same weave off the same looms, separated at the finishing stage — a reminder that in the cotton twill trade, weave names the structure, while bleach and dye name the job the cloth is going to do. Care follows the fiber: drill washes hard, irons flat and softens gradually without losing its diagonal character.
A pronounced diagonal twill in cotton. The strong bias visible in the weave is the diagonal rib of the twill, steeper and more emphatic than in lighter twills — a structure that gives drill its combination of strength, abrasion resistance and a firm, workmanlike hand.
Khaki drill is drill dyed to the khaki shade and made into uniforms — the cloth of tropical and summer military dress. Boatsail drill is the unbleached grade made into sails for sailing craft, where the cloth is used in its natural state for strength rather than appearance.
Pocket linings take concentrated wear — keys, coins, hands in and out thousands of times — and must be strong, smooth and inexpensive in a cloth that will outlast the garment's fashion life. Drill's dense cotton twill meets that specification, and it is sold in lining weights for exactly this hidden work.