Broadcloth

The effect of the milling process is to draw the yarns much closer together than could be achieved in the loom and allow the individual fibres of the wool to bind together in a felting process, which results in a dense, blind face[i] cloth with a stiff drape which is highly weather-resistant, hard wearing and capable of taking a cut edge without the need for being hemmed.

The manufacturing process originates from Flanders, the type of cloth was also made in Leiden and several parts of England at the end of the medieval period.

[1] The raw material was short staple wool, carded and spun into yarn and then woven on a broad loom to produce cloth 1.75 yards wide.

Since the early 1920s, the American market has used the term "broadcloth" to describe a plain-woven, usually mercerised fabric woven with a rib and a slightly heavier filling yarn, used for shirt-making, made from cotton or a polyester-and-cotton blend.

[5] The Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States uses the unambiguous terms "broadwoven" and "narrow woven", with a breadth cutoff of 30 centimeters (about 12 inches).

This means that the production process didn't take place entirely in one single factory anymore but according to a precise task allocation, where in several stages intermediate goods were produced.

English exports of broadcloth reached their highest level in the mid 16th century, after which some regions began producing other kinds of cloth.