muslin, is a light to medium weight solid (usually)cloth.

Calico is light weight muslin with fine all over floral design (think laura ashley type prints--or little house on the praire prints.)

cambric, is similar to muslin, but the warp is always dyed a color (often blue) and the weft is left white. (as in the old Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme-"tell her to make me a cambric shirt, with out any seams or needlework")

monks cloth is coarser still.. and is, now days characterized by slight un evenness in the spun thread.. with small slubs-slightly thicker parts of thread, which give the woven fabric a homespun look.

sail cloth is coarser still, but its not as coarse as denim or canvas or canvas twill (denim is canvas twill!)

muslin tend to have a higher thread count than cambric, i wouldn't consider anything less than 160 to be muslin.. (80 thread in one direction per inch, and 80 more in the other)
cambric might only be 120 thread count.

the blouses Jo defined--(circa 1960) sheer to almost sheer-- in this country that fabric would be voile, or lawn..

broad cloth is a fine muslin, woven on a wide loom.. that used to be 36 or 45 inch wide, now it can be 108 inches (just short of 3 meters wide!) in years past, a fine gentlemans shirt made out of broadcloth, would not have a center seam down the back -- common muslin, at 20/22 wide was to narrow to make a seam free back!

fiberbabe might fill us in with more details--

There are lots of others, seersucker-- (a AWAD word--look it up)



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