Apron/Towel for medieval reenactment

For a long time I've been bothered about my lack of a proper towel that could be left out to dry during medieval or viking age camps. Modern towels are great, but they are a sore to the eye when left out to dry at camp. A more medieval looking towel was needed - and eventually it turned out it was usable as an apron as well.

I have no idea how medieval people dried themselves after baths. Probably baths were scarce, and since cloths were quite expensive and neighter linen or wool is really suitable for towels maybe they just dried out withot towels. Maybe they used some piece of clothing or a cloth? I don't know, but I know I wanted a towel for historical camps.

Fabric

For this small project I used a piece of simple plain weave white linen I had. It was square and about 125x125 cm.

The fabric is not very thick and will not take a lot of water, but at least it should be able to dry quickly.

Eventually linen fabric become very soft when used.

Design

The only thing to design on this project was a way of hanging the towel to try, or while in bath or showers.

The decision made was to include a big loop in one corner. The loop should be wide enough to slip the entire towel through for drying on already attached strings.

The loop was made from cutting a rectangular piece of the same fabric and then folding it length-wise to four layers where the edges pointed inwards to be protected.

The other design was simply to fold and fasten the edges of the towel.

I also embroidered my personal emblem to make sure it finds its way back to me when I forget it.

Hanging the towel

Apart from hanging the towel from the neck to be used as an apron, it could also be hanged through the loop in different fashions: