The most basic fabric in Rimworld, cloth is a very versatile and very useful material in the early-game and late-game. In the early-game, players will find themselves using cloth to make new clothing for their colonists. In the late-game, players might want to decorate their floors with carpeting or make a billiard table for their pawns. Cloth is also necessary to make medicine so be sure to keep some on hand in case you suddenly have a bunch of bleeding colonists from a raid!
How to Grow Cotton
Cotton is pretty easy to grow and should be one of the first growing zones you make when you get started next to your rice or potatoes! If you’re also wondering what the best crop to grow is, check out this guide. Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to grow cotton and how to harvest it for cloth. This is the first step to making cloth in Rimworld.
So step one is to go to the “Zone” tab which is located in the architect tab. Here you can make “growing zones”. Select an area you want to make into your cotton plant forest. When doing this make sure you check the grounds fertility level! Hover over the area you want to make your farm with your mouse. In the bottom left corner of the screen, it will tell you how fertile the soil is. Cotton takes about 14 days to mature in 100% fertile soil.
Once you’ve selected your growing zone and checked the soil’s fertility, change the plant type to cotton. By default it will be potatoes, simply click the potato plant and a list of other plants you can grow will pop up. Some plants require your pawn to have a certain skill level, luckily cotton is not one of those!
After you’ve made your zone your colony’s grower should run over and start planting cotton seeds. If they don’t check under the “Work” tab what other tasks they have enabled. Or you can click on them and see what task they are currently doing.
Over time, your cotton plants will change. You can check their progress by clicking on one and seeing how far along it is. At 100% it will say “ready to harvest” and your grower will eventually go over and start harvesting your cotton. (https://skinnyninjamom.com) Depending on the fertility of the soil, your cotton will grow at different rates. Here is a simple table to help you figure out how long it will take!
| Ground Type | Gravel | Soil | Rich Soil | Hydroponics |
| Fertility % | 70 | 100 | 140 | 280 |
| Grow Time (days) | ~18 | ~14 | ~11 | ~7 |
When harvesting, your plant cutter has a chance to “botch” the harvest. Botching a harvest results in no cloth being harvested. As your harvester grows in skill level, they will botch less and less harvests so don’t get disheartened. Upon a successful harvest, 10 cloth will drop nearby! Make sure you have a stockpile set up that allows cloth and textiles. You need to get it covered so that it doesn’t deteriorate and that is how to make cloth in Rimworld! There is your step-by-step guide on how to get cloth. Cloth is a great clothing fabric, but not the best one. If you want to see how all the fabrics stack up against each other, check out this post.
If you enjoyed this guide and your looking for other Rimworld content, check out our posts on the best mods, best guns, or best melee weapons!