a good quality bleached muslin is often the choice- mine I am using a variety of white on white's, I use a lot of WOW's so, each time I purchase a new one I get a bit extra and cut a few squares for my Cathedral Window's project- which is my current (hand- travel) project. so it has many different (prints) but I will tell you- sometimes those Wow's are hard to hand stitch through- (if you are doing yours by machine it isn't going to matter so much) but I have times I wish I had just stuck with the muslin.