Not understanding clothier's shop

[Latch]

I'm just trying to make new clothes for my dwarves and have a work order set up to do this. I have tons of animal cloth (sheep wool cloth and the like), and the work order task keeps getting cancelled with this message: "... broker cancels work order make cloth robe: needs 1 unused plant cloth." I am clearly not understanding something, and obviously I don't have any plant cloth. I thought animal cloth would work, since it's labeled "cloth"? I guess not? So what do I do with this animal cloth then?

[Morkonan]

The "cloth" types are not interchangeable materials. Each material class has its own specific origins.

You can craft with "animal cloth" and that's basically "wool." There's a good breakdown in the wiki about Clothing that shows you what each category of material is supposed to be derived from.

So, you can craft Cloth Gloves or Wool Gloves, in Plant Fiber Cloth or Animal Cloth, respectively. (Pigtails are where you should be getting Plant Fiber from and that comes from Farmers "Processing Plants" to get the fibers which are made into String which goes to the Loom to be made into Cloth. Wool has a similar route, as well, just a different source.)

Setting it up is complicated, though, if you want to do it right. Here's a good start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUob3oDN6B8

[MadAsgardian]

You can make yarn products with animal wool.

[Philtre]

When you set a work order at the clothier's, there are separate work order listings for items made from plant cloth, animal cloth, and silk. They won't substitute materials, so make sure you have selected the work order that corresponds to the type of cloth you have available.

[Morkonan]

Side note: ALWAYS leave a minimum supply of String and Cloth as well as Leather. These are frequently requested by certain "Strange Mood" Dorfs... Don't ever set up Orders in these classes of items that will completely deplete them. (Hospitals, though, may take String/Cloth, but they have an obscenely huge multiplier on that resource, so they actually use very, very, little of it once they get it.)

ie: Always work from a minimum stockpile or greater-than stockpile formula to leave some in there.

[Latch]

Thank you all :)