Fabrics and Textiles
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50 free Fabrics and Textiles trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every piece of cloth has a story. The names in your wardrobe point to French cities, Persian phrases and Scottish towns; some dyes were once reserved for emperors; and a few of the toughest modern fibres were discovered by accident in a laboratory. This fabrics quiz covers the whole bolt: natural fibres such as cotton, wool, silk and linen, the synthetics that followed, the weaves and patterns that give cloth its character, and the looms, mills and inventors of the Industrial Revolution. You will also meet the vocabulary of the sewing room and textile traditions from Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is pitched for sewists, quilters, knitters, fashion students and anyone who likes knowing why things are called what they are. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Angora wool, prized by knitters for its fluffy halo, comes from the coat of which animal?
Rabbit
Rabbit fur, not goat hair, is the source of Angora wool; the similarly named Angora goat produces mohair instead.
Q 02Polar fleece, developed in Massachusetts in 1979, can be made from which recycled household items?
Plastic bottles
Plastic bottles made of PET can be turned into fleece, and Malden Mills chose not to patent its new fabric, so rival makers copied it and it spread quickly and cheaply.
Q 03Which fabric pattern is thought to take its name from a nineteenth-century dance craze?
Polka dot
Polka dot fabric became fashionable just as the polka swept dance floors, and many other products of the era borrowed the same name to cash in.
Q 04Which word in a phrase for nervous suspense once named the bent nails that stretched wet woollen cloth on a frame?
Tenterhooks
Tenterhooks pinned newly washed woollen cloth to a wooden frame called a tenter so that it dried without shrinking; fields full of these frames left 'tenter' in many British place names.
Q 05Tyrian purple, the dye reserved for Roman emperors by the fourth century, was extracted from which marine animals?
Sea snails
Sea snails of the murex family secrete the pigment in their mucus, and it took tens of thousands of them to make the dye, which is why purple cloth signalled rank.
Q 06Which British queen's white satin wedding dress, trimmed with Honiton lace, helped make white fashionable for brides?
Victoria
Queen Victoria married in 1840, and her order was a boost to Devon's lace-makers; other brides already wore white, but the heavy press coverage of her wedding spread the fashion.
Q 07In Ovid's Metamorphoses, which boastful mortal weaver is turned into a spider after a contest with the goddess Minerva?
Arachne
Arachne hanged herself in shame once the contest was over, and in Ovid's telling Minerva changed her into a spider out of pity, a story told to explain why spiders spin webs.
Q 08Linen, the cloth ancient Egyptians used to wrap mummies, is made from the fibres of which plant?
Flax
Flax is a demanding crop to grow and process, which helps explain why linen costs so much; the word linen itself is related to linum, the plant's Latin name.
Q 09Which English textile workers, who took their name from a legendary weaver called Ned, smashed mill machinery from 1811?
Luddites
Luddites signed threatening letters to mill owners with the name of Ned Ludd, and the word is now used for anyone who resists new technology.
Q 10Which checked cotton fabric is Dorothy Gale's trademark blue-and-white dress made of in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?
Gingham
Gingham reached Europe in the 17th century as a striped cloth; the checks came later, when English mills began weaving it in blue and white.
Q 11Which fibre did DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek develop while searching for a lightweight material to strengthen tyres?
Kevlar
Kevlar is five times stronger than steel for its weight, so it soon moved on from racing tyres into bullet-resistant vests, sails and bicycle tyres.
Q 12Which synthetic fibre, first sold as toothbrush bristles in 1938, became a sensation in women's stockings in 1940?
Nylon
Nylon stockings sold 64 million pairs in their first year, before almost all wartime production was diverted to parachutes and parachute cord.
Q 13Which stretchy synthetic fibre, invented at DuPont in 1958, was developed to replace the rubber in women's girdles?
Spandex
Spandex is the name preferred in North America; in Britain, Australia and much of Latin America the same fibre is better known as Lycra, after a brand.
Q 21The word denim is a contraction of a French phrase meaning 'serge from' which city?
Nîmes
Nîmes gave denim its name, while the word jeans comes from Gênes, the French name for Genoa, where a similar hard-wearing cloth was traded.
Q 22Which dye, once extracted from a plant grown across the Indian subcontinent, gives blue jeans their colour?
Indigo
Indigo is applied only to the lengthwise yarns of denim while the crosswise ones stay white, which is why jeans are blue on the outside and pale on the inside.
Q 23Which colour was the dye that 18-year-old William Perkin discovered by accident in 1856 while trying to make quinine?
Mauve
Mauve turned up in a black sludge that looked like a failed experiment; Perkin noticed purple traces while cleaning the flask with alcohol and went on to make his name in dyes.
Q 14The silkworm, whose cocoons are unravelled to make silk, feeds almost exclusively on the leaves of which tree?
Mulberry
Mulberry leaves are the silkworm's only real diet, and it takes more than 100 kg of them to produce a single kilogram of raw silk.
Q 15Which leader of India's freedom struggle championed khadi, a coarse cloth spun and woven entirely by hand?
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi urged Indians to spin and weave their own khadi instead of buying British mill cloth, and the spinning wheel became an emblem of the independence movement.
Q 16Which American inventor patented a cotton gin in 1794 that pulled the fibres from their seeds using wire hooks?
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney hoped his gin would cut the labour that cotton required, but it made picking the slow step and so increased the demand for workers to harvest the crop.
Q 17Which reinforcement did tailor Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss patent in 1873 to strengthen the pockets of work trousers?
Copper rivets
Copper rivets on the pocket seams turned miners' work trousers into blue jeans, which Marlon Brando and James Dean later made a symbol of teenage rebellion.
Q 18Which Paris couturier built her early success on jersey, a humble knit then used mainly for men's underwear?
Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel first bought jersey because it was cheap, while rival designers avoided a knit they found hard to handle; she kept using it long after money stopped being a worry.
Q 19Despite its name, the Bayeux Tapestry showing the Norman conquest of England is technically which kind of needlework?
Embroidery
Embroidery is the right word because the scenes are stitched onto the cloth rather than woven into it, along a strip nearly 70 metres long.
Q 20Which figure on bedsheet packaging did US regulators warn in 2005 could mislead shoppers when makers inflate it?
Thread count
Thread count adds up the lengthwise and crosswise yarns in a square inch, and makers inflate it by counting every strand of a twisted yarn separately.
Q 24Which red dye, once used to colour British soldiers' coats, is made from dried insects that live on prickly pear cacti?
Cochineal
Cochineal was a Spanish and Portuguese monopoly from the New World, and it lives on as carmine, the colouring in many foods and lipsticks.
Q 25Which teardrop-shaped pattern of Persian origin takes its English name from a textile town in the west of Scotland?
Paisley
Paisley became the pattern's name because the town's weavers reproduced the designs of prized shawls imported from Kashmir, using Jacquard looms to do it.
Q 26Which patterned cloth, linked to Scottish clans, was banned for about two generations after the Jacobite rising of 1745?
Tartan
Tartan was caught by the Dress Act of 1746, which outlawed Highland dress for men and boys but made an exception for the army's Highland regiments.
Q 27By law, genuine Harris tweed must be handwoven by islanders in their own homes in which Scottish island group?
The Outer Hebrides
The Outer Hebrides are also where the wool has to be dyed, spun and finished, and a 1993 Act of Parliament set up an authority to guard the name.
Q 28Which reversible patterned fabric is named after the Syrian capital, a great trading centre on the Silk Road?
Damask
Damask was originally made entirely of silk; the name now covers any fabric with a pattern woven to show on both sides, and it is seen at its best in cotton and linen.
Q 29Which fine cotton cloth, woven around Dhaka so sheer it was compared to glass, is commonly said to be named after Mosul?
Muslin
Muslin from Mughal Bengal led world exports of the cloth in the 17th and 18th centuries, with Dhaka as the capital of the worldwide trade.
Q 30Which cloth, used by Central Asian nomads to cover yurts, is made by matting and pressing wool instead of weaving?
Felt
Felt made from wool is one of the oldest known textiles, and nomadic peoples such as the Mongols still make rugs, tents and clothing from it.