When a UK magazine says

And some more help

Calico is, to me, a cotton fabric. Most of my family lived & worked in the Derbyshire Peak District where the water was very "soft" and thus perfect for any industry involving cotton fabrics. There was a company called the "Calico Printers Association" or CPA which employed a large number of people in its factories where cotton fabrics were printed with designs etched on copper rollers. Alas the CPA and its factories are no more, swamped by cheap imports from the Far East.

My maternal grandmother had a Christening dress, very similar to the Missouri State Fair one. Hers was made in India back in the early Raj on fine cotton. It did all her babies (16) myself and most of 27 cousins, my eldest and then sadly the fabric started to just crumble. Somebody still has the remains in tissue paper.

It was very long, maybe as much as a yard and had two petticoats that went under it. All made in this fine cotton. My mother and I figured that the two petticoats were jointly for modesty and also because back then babies peed in diapers and there were no plastic pants over them so one tried to pad everything out for the comfort of the godmother holding said baby lol

Yes, I understand that. We're talking about different grades and weaves and categories of cottons and how they're labeled. As far as I know, we're not talking about anything but cotton.

Well, that was a right nice visual there, dear. Eeeew, ick!

Calico was the Name given to all types of cottons that came from Calicut [or CALCUTA ] in India . In USA it has been used to describe ANY inexpensive , plainweave cotton , that barely carrioes printing on it . In Uk , since the 17th cent, it is used to describe a plain woven cotton that was made from the carded ends [i.e. it has liitle dark flecks, or spots ] mirjam

Do you realize that a common question a few years back was "Is the baby dry?" - first rubber pants came in for babies in diapers, then they switched to plastic, all in the era before throwaway diapers of course.

I've tried to think when that was, but can't pin the appx year down, maybe google but it's not significant. I can remember holding babies when I was kid and then finding babe and I were wet. It involved a great deal of washing (in an era when there were no washers or dryers in Europe) as babies in cribs were soaked by morning.

"Disposable" diapers made their debut at least 41 years ago -- that's 1966. DD will be 41 this November. When we drove from central California to Lizard Land the following summer, I bought a package of the horrid things so that I didn't have to worry about schlepping dirty diapers across the desert. They were very expensive and absolutely worthless! I still had to put plastic pants over those diapers but I

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Like Madras plaid being a descriptor of fabrics originally seen as from Madras - now Chenai - India.

FWIW, in thefabric stores here, particularly those that carry good quality fabric, and the quilting shops, the "calico" fabrics are plainweave cotton, but with a wide variety of printing on them - from densely printed florals and geometrics to sparsely printed. Also, novelty cotton prints will end up with the calicos in some shops.

Ellice