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• Superhydrophobic and antibacterial fabric was achieved by in situ growing ZIF-8 and PDMS coating. • Fabricated fabric demonstrated high oil/water separation capacity. • As-prepared fabric showed excellent antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus. • Samples exhibited excellent good abrasion resistance and laundering stability. Facile construction of multifunctional fabrics with durability still remains a challenge in the past decade. In this work, we report a facile fabrication of non-fluorinated superhydrophobic and antibacterial cotton fabric surfaces via in situ growing zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) nanocrystals on cotton fibers under room temperature condition and subsequently coating with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The surface morphology and chemical composition of treated fabric have been characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The as-prepared cotton fabric showed superhydrophobic property with a water contact angle (WCA) of 151.36° and a sliding angle of 3.6° and excellent antibacterial properties against E. coli and S. aureus. The durability of the superhydrophobic and antibacterial fabrics was evaluated by repeated washing and abrasion cycles. The as-prepared fabrics retained their excellent antibacterial property and superhydrophobicity after 300 cycles of abrasion and 5 cycles of washing. The robustness of superhydrophobicity and antibacterial activity made this method has wild application prospects in biomedical field in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]