Altar Linen Embroidery Designs

The last days of summer are winding down, and thoughts are turning to hand embroidery designs for altar linens.  Over the past few years, my collection of vintage hand embroidery designs has been growing. Many of the designs are old and fragile. Yet, many of these designs are still lovely and will work beautifully for altar linens today.

This is a recent treasure. It is a hand-made book and on the cover it says:

Some Designs

for Communions Sets

and Fair Linen Cloths

The description for this little gem of a book sounded too good to pass up. It was a gamble to place the order, but what a pleasant surprise it was upon opening the package. The package contained a hand-made booklet of tracings and designs intended for hand embroidery on altar linens, fair linens, palls, chalice veils, and purificators.

There were a few loose papers included in the book, such as this pattern of a cross with crowns. This design looks somewhat familiar, but is still very nice.

Several large sheets have what appears to be iron on transfers for hand embroidery of altar linens and Fair linens. The nice part about these patterns is the size of the designs. There is enough of the pattern repeat present to know the entire embroidery design.

The rest of the book is a collection of traced hand embroidery designs, along with what seems to be pricing information for different sizes of church linens. It is difficult to know exactly the purpose behind this little book.  Was this the work catalog for someone who made their living by doing hand embroidery for clients?  Did the book belong to a workroom, and serve as examples of possible designs?  It is difficult to know for sure, but it is lovely that the book has been preserved.

There are several hand embroidery designs that are unique within this tiny collection. Perhaps some of them will make it into the book currently in the work for hand embroidery designs for church linens, altar linens, and church vestments.  I will be sure to keep you posted!

Solo Dei Gloria

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