Cheesecloth

Cheesecloth is the loosest useful plain weave, a cotton gauze open enough to strain, drain, and breathe, graded from coarse to fine by the number of threads per inch. Its name records the dairy, where it pressed curds and wrapped wheels to let them age without rotting, but the same open cloth strains stock and jelly in kitchens, dusts and polishes in workshops, and stands in for ghostly drapery on every low-budget film set. It is the humble cousin of gauze and the muslins, defined entirely by how little there is of it.