Muslin Fabric Mills Directory

What Muslin Is

Muslin is a plain-weave cotton fabric - over one yarn, under the next - made in a wide range of weights from a sheer, open cloth to a sturdy medium-weight sheeting. It is usually sold undyed: natural (the warm, speckled cream of unbleached cotton), bleached white, or occasionally dyed for craft and display use. The name is old and travelled: muslins were among the famous fine cottons of Bengal traded through Mosul, from which the word is traditionally derived, and the cloth has been a staple ever since because it is cheap, breathable, easy to sew and easy to wash. This site's Muslin Fabric Definition gives the formal glossary definition used across Apparel Search.

Grades are a matter of weight and finish. Sheer muslins and butter muslins are open, soft cloths for food straining, polishing and interlining; standard sewing muslin is the even, medium cloth sold by the bolt in fabric shops; heavy muslins approach canvas in body and serve for backdrops, scenery and protective covers. Yarn quality shows in the slubs and neps of the natural grade - part of its character - and in how evenly the cloth is woven, since a skewed or streaky muslin will not hang true when it is used as a fitting toile or a photographic background.

The Sewing Muslin and Muslin's Other Lives

In the sewing room, 'a muslin' has become the name of a thing as much as a fabric: the trial garment sewn in cheap muslin cloth to test a pattern's fit and construction before the real fabric is cut. Because muslin is inexpensive, stable and easy to mark, a toile in muslin saves expensive cloth and reveals fitting problems - drag lines, strain, wrong ease - at a stage when they can still be fixed on the pattern. The same cloth drapes patterns on the stand, backs quilts, lines curtains and serves as the base for embroidery and printing trials, and theatre and photography consume it by the roll for backdrops and diffusers precisely because it is neutral, matte and cheap in wide widths.

Beyond the workroom, muslin wraps and strains food (the classic cheesecloth uses overlap with fine muslin), bags herbs and hops, swaddles babies in its softest grades, and appears in bookbinding, upholstery undercovers and dust covers. The mill listed below, Usman Enterprises of Pakistan, sits in one of the world's great cotton regions - Pakistan's mills spin and weave cotton at every level from greige cloth to finished fabric, and plain cottons like muslin are a staple export line. Thank you for using the Apparel Search Fabric Mill Directory.

Buying and Caring for Muslin

Buy muslin by its job. For a fitting toile, choose the weight closest to your fashion fabric - a heavy muslin will flatter a pattern meant for silk, and a sheer one will hide the structure a coat needs - and buy enough of it at once, because bolts vary. Pre-wash it: cotton muslin shrinks, and a toile that shrinks after fitting teaches the wrong lesson. For food and craft use, unbleached natural muslin avoids finishes you may not want near food, and it can be washed and reused many times. Care is the simplest in this whole fabric section - muslin washes hot, irons hot, and softens with use; its only enemies are mildew if it is stored damp and the gradual weakening that comes from repeated bleaching. Kept dry and clean, a length of muslin lasts for years of fittings, wrappings and backdrops.

Muslin Fabric Mills Listed Here