Skip to content

Spring Travels: Florida

Spring travels led to St. Leo Monastery in Florida, a serene retreat with a beautiful chapel set against a lake. The exterior’s simplicity contrasts with the rich terracotta stone and tile color, a wall side lining hanging with tapestry fabric in deep reds, rusts, golds, and terracotta. The chapel’s design, statues, and fabric create a peaceful atmosphere for prayer. Despite being a brief visit, the monastery left a lasting impression, showcasing the beauty found in both vestments and architectural details.

St. Aidan Green Detail Liturgical Fabric

St. Aidan Liturgical Fabric

St. Aidan is a small reversible liturgical fabric that features an English Rose and vine pattern. The pattern repeat is 8″ which makes it an easy fabric to work with for those who are just starting out with pattern repeats, as well as being a favorite fabric choice for the seasoned vestment maker. St. Aidan is suitable for making stoles, chasubles, chalice veils, burses, dalmatics, and tunics as well as for other small vestment items.  St. Aidan would also work for smaller altar hangings.

Post Cards of Litany of Loreto Embroideries

Wish Lists Royal School of Needlework Style

Wishlist of the Royal School of Needlework for years, plans were cancelled by scheduling conflicts. Yet, browsing to their online store provided a silver lining. The Handbook of Embroidery catalog and some enticing embroidery While missing out the classes, the excitement of exploring these ecclesiastical embroidery treasures brings comfort.

St. Hubert Liturgical Fabric

St. Hubert Liturgical Fabrics

St. Hubert is ideal for orphrey bands, stoles, altar frontals, copes, dalmatics, tunics, and chasubles. Paired with Ivory Lurex St. Margaret, it creates a festive frontal for Easter, Christmas, and New Year’s weddings. The orphrey bands and superfrontal feature the gold/gold St. Hubert Liturgical Brocatelle Fabric, edged with a gold oak leaf gallon. The ivory/lurex St. Margaret adds a unique touch with subtle gold threads weaving Tudor Rose and Crown designs.

St Margaret Ivory Lurex Detail Liturgical Fabric

St. Margaret Ivory Lurex Altar Frontal

The fabrics selection on this project is St. Margaret in the Ivory Lurex color and St. Hubert in the Gold/Gold color. Oak Leaf gallon was used to edge the orphrey, and a metallic gold thread fringe graces the lower edge of the superfrontal and frontal.  The superfrontal is made entirely from the Gold/Gold St. Hubert with the metallic gold fringe as the only adornment. The frontal is made using St. Margaret as the base fabric, with orphreys of St. Hubert in Gold/Gold with the 1-inch wide Oak Leaf galloon used to finish the edges. 

Aragon Red Lurex Liturgical Tapestry Fabric

Aragon Liturgical Tapestry Fabric in Red Lurex

Aragon is a gem of a liturgical fabric. It has a large-scale design, or rather, several large-scale designs that make it an extremely versatile fabric to use for making church vestments.  The main design feature is an elaborate Jardiniere which contains floral elements. The story behind the birds is that they are mediators between heaven and earth. Their blue and white coloring blends beautifully with the rich red and green floral elements.

Funeral Vestments

The Clergy presiding over the service wore matching cream-colored vestments with tapestry orphreys. Another clergy wore vestments such as surplices, dalmatic, tunic, and chasuble, according to their role and position within the church. Clergy robed in matching white chasubles lined the stairs to pay their last respects as the flag-draped coffin left the Cathedral

Silk Thread Color Card from Designs for Church Embroidery

Designs for Church Embroidery: an Original Copy

Author notes from original copy
– The color card at the beginning of the book has been inserted by the kind permission of Messrs. Liberty & Co., of Regent Street, London; and A. R. cannot say enough in praise of their colors and the Filo Floss silks sold by them.  Many of the colors, she says, are perfect; and this verdict is made after comparing them with many original pictures of the old masters in Italy and elsewhere – the shades of red, green, blue, and browns being spoken of with special praise.