Jersey is a knit fabric mostly used for clothing manufacture. It was originally made of wool, but is now made of wool, cotton, and synthetic fibres like Polyester, Elastan or Viscouse. Since medieval times Jersey, Channel Islands, where the material was first produced, had been an important exporter of knitted good and the fabric in wool from Jersey became well known.
The fabric can be a very stretchy single knitting, usually light-weight, jersey with one flat side and one piled side. When made with a lightweight yarn, this is the fabric most often used to make T-shirts. It can also be a double knitted jersey (interlock jersey), with less stretch, that creates a heavier fabric of two single jerseys knitted together to leave the two flat sides on the outsides of the fabric, with the piles in the middle.
Nevertheless Single Jersey is considered to be the most popular fabric for T-shirt production. Single Jersey fabric can be knitted with different weights: 100, 140, 155, 160, 180, 200, 210 grams per fabric meter and different composition. 100% Cotton Single Jersey is the most popular, but if extra flexibility is needed on the regular basis 4% of Elastan is added to the fabric when knitting. 96% Cotton 4% Elastan Single Jersey fabric is commonly used for women T-shirt production (because of it’s flexibility).