While reading about the Tudors I read a line about Catherine of Aragon mending shirts for her husband (King Henry the Eighth) and the idea of the queen mending shirts ran smack into lots of uninformed assumptions in need of correction.

I'd assumed that, in the stereotypical image of noblewomen in a sewing circle, they weren't doing anything useful or practical, but rather just doing something to keep their hands busy, like modern people who do embroidery as a hobby.

I'd read that noblewomen were trained to be decorative adornments to a court, and perform perhaps an important social role, but absolutely not do anything considered "work". So I definitely thought that mending would be done by servants, like the laundry, and not by the queen. Even if it is the king's mending.

So, when the queen and her ladies in waiting are sitting and sewing, what are they working on?