Here we have the beginnings of my smocked apron, a la Luttrell Psalter.

I’m using heavy natural colored linen, cut to 28" wide.  Why?

Because I’m following the conventional wisdom (cringe) that household looms  in the 14th century were fairly narrow, ~30".

(Anybody got a citation for this one?  Ann?)

I question that ALL looms in the 14th c were narrow.  Or that some fabrics produced on narrowish looms were not double-woven to be twice as wide.  But I am yielding to the CW on this one out of expediency, and because the illustration in Luttrell seems to be a narrow apron, so we’ll save the two-person industry loom crusade for another day.  (I mean to go comparing fabric widths of extant fabrics, and chart them.  Perhaps someone has done this?)

So here’s the loom fabric gridded out at 1/2" for smocking, and some thread I’m going to try.  Turns out that the embroidery shop less than a mile from my house carries (albeit in limited supply) linen and silk/wool and silk and wool threads.  Enough to be getting on with, and at good prices – I paid $2 for each of these.

Oh – two points for anyone quick enough to realize why 28" and not 30".

Time’s up: Because it would make sense to just leave the selvage on both sides – but I don’t have selvage on both sides.  So I’m pretending that I cut off those selvages for some worthy purpose – they’re very sturdy and stiff, after all – and so then I’d have to hem the edges, just as I have to do for my cut-from-60" piece in reality.