Shimmering Fabrics and How to Use Them
Thinking about a special Christmas project with white and gold colors. Considering silk with gold trim or metallic fabric for the budget friendly project.
Brocade or Damask?
Brocade: Heavy fabric with raised designs woven on a jacquard loom, suitable for liturgical items like stoles and chasubles. And Damask: Reversible fabric with intricate designs, woven on a jacquard loom, creating a shiny background. Often made from silk, cotton, wool, or rayon.
Liturgical Fabrics
Special ecclesiastical fabrics for pastoral attire, like stoles and chasubles, use intricate patterns with silks, rayons, and gold/silver threads. The Wakefield pattern, with black and gold threads, offers varied textures and a reversible design—use it as a gold fabric with black accents or a black fabric with gold accents.
Altar Fair Linen with Lace Edge Trim
This trim features a zig-zag design filled with star-shaped motifs. Notably, it has triangular peaks at the upper edge where it attaches to the Altar Linen. An interesting detail is the deep hem of the linen, matching the trim’s depth—around 5 to 6 inches. While this may seem unusual to modern eyes, older reference books mention long Fair Linens having deep hems, especially if they reach close to the floor. The added weight from a deep hem likely contributes to the Fair Linen hanging well.
Lace for Church Use Instruction Book
The title is Lace for Church Use by Marie-Clare Downham.
Lace: the Forgotten Ecclesiastical Craft?
…types of lace used in the church…
Pastoral or Priest Stole Ends: Fringe and Tassels
Tassels and fringe make excellent finishes for stole ends, but there are tricks for both. For tassels, use a button-hole marker to ensure even spacing. Decide on the number of tassels and the desired distance from each end, then mark and pin them in place. Tassels have a small cord or loop at the upper edge; attach it evenly. Tack the cord on the back of the stole, ensuring even hanging. In the photo, gold rayon blend tassels were initially used but later replaced with metallic gold tassels.
Vintage Baptismal Cloth
Baptismal Towels or Baptismal Napkins may be as simple or elaborate as one desires to make them. The size of this Baptismal Cloth is approximately 19″ x 21″ as the finished size. The embroidery may be a very simple hand-embroidered cross. The hems should be narrow. Now, there may be more specific instructions available in some older Church Vestment Books
Lace Making for Altar Cloths
Lace, and variations is often applied to the hemline and sleeves of vestments such as a rochet which forms part of the choir robes. The lace can vary with styles of pattern, and materials, being sometimes a little heavier and bolder, to being something very light and airy.
Priest or Pastoral Stoles: More Trims
Dice Trim,” has tiny alternating squares woven in a solid color and a gold thread. This trim, although narrow at 1/2″, is a powerhouse of a trim, it gives a clean, tailored look. It sews very nicely. It comes in a nice assortment of liturgical colors: black, red, green, blue, gold, white, and purple. Dice Braid offers a very clean, tailored, crisp finish to vestments. It can be used to edge the long sides of stoles or as an end finish to a stole. It can be used as a finish on the edge of a chalice veil, as well as being used on any other type of vestment where trim is needed.
Priest or Pastoral Stole: Tassel Ends
The end can have fringe on the lower edge, or the edge can have a plain hem as the finish. Creative placement of trims and orphrey bands offer other options. One of my favorite ways to finish the end of a stole is to use tassels. The tassel choices for this current stole project are a soft white or cream tassel and a gold tassel.
More Quatrefoil Designs
Making a choice of having all of the designs stitched in a quatrefoil frame…
Quatrefoil Ecclesiastical Design – Part 2
The design worked in a quatrefoil border on silk dupioni, which will need to be applied to the base silk fabric….
Quatrefoil Ecclesiastical Design
Applying the Ecclesiastical Machine Embroidery Design involves clipping corners, stitching, and turning the edge under. The motif is carefully stitched in place, ensuring a secure and neat attachment.
Chalice Veil Orphrey Trim Part 2
The orphrey trim for the chalice veil had been planned and cut to size and position based on the use of the black Passion Cross. The idea was to place the black motif on a gold motif so it would be more visible. The center of the orphrey was located and matched to the center of the design on the black Fairford Fabric.
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