Tonight is a fun planning night! There have been so many new machine embroidery designs created at Ecclesiastical Sewing in the past few months, and finally, it is time to get at some stitching here in the Ecclesiastical Sewing workroom. With the so many festivals quickly approaching, there is much to be done. But first, let me give you a quick run down of what is in the works.
This past week, new patterns were completed for a variety of pulpit falls, altar hangings, and antipendium hangings. All of these items have complete full size pattern pieces for the face fabric, interfacing, and lining pieces. The also have adjustment lines to lengthen and shorten, in both width and length of the items. The patterns will be available as quickly as we can work up the instructions.
To go along with that, many of our new machine embroidery designs have been created for use on these altar and pulpit falls. Tonight, I am working a few items to have embroideries created for samples. Here are some of the embroidery designs being considered.
Luther Rose with Gold Spray is a digital machine embroidery design that was created for use on items like a pulpit fall, or an altar superfrontal. This was really a fun little project to create. One of my vintage French Vestment making books dating from the late 1800’s had this lovely spray design with the center circle. The original French version had an I H S monogram in the center. I have taken the liberty of inserting the Luther Rose emblem into the circle to create this design. It was quite an undertaking to clean up the original pattern to create the sprays, but I am pleased with the results.
This machine embroidery design is sized to be 6.71 inches high and 16.72 inches wide. It uses 11 color changes, and has 75,695 stitches. The designs stitch out as high quality embroideries with plenty of stitches to create a rich finished product. Each machine embroidery design comes with a list of Madeira thread colors from the rayon collection. The rayon threads have a high sheen, making them a nice choice for use on church vestments. While the thread chart lists only rayon threads, I often prefer to add in a few metallic threads in select places. The placement for gold metallic thread is quite obvious on this design. The contrast in threads between rayon and metallic creates additional surfaces for light reflection, as well as adding interest to the final design. The plan is to have the Luther Rose Gold Spray design stitched on horizontal silk dupioni orphrey bands which can be added to a pulpit fall.
The next design comes in a number of sizes for use on a variety of church vestments. The smallest size for the Luther Rose Quatrefoil design is 3.5″ which is the perfect size for use on stoles. We will offer this size on both ready-made stoles as well as one orphreys for use in making stoles as well as on Bible markers. This machine embroidery design stitches out at exactly 3.5 inches in both height and width. There are 12,157 stitches in the pint-sized design to ensure it is rich and full looking. It uses many of the same thread colors as the Luther Rose Spray above. This design is also available in a 5.5 inch, 7 inch, and 9 inch size. The 5.5 inch size works well on items like altar super frontals – one design on either end with a VDMA design or cross in the center. The 7 inch design is intended for use on a chasuble, either on a “Y” orphrey or a column band. The 9 inch design is intended for use on things like pulpit falls.
Up next is the VDMA Design. This design took what seemed like months to create. I had a wonderful “A” from our Alpha Omega design collection, but none of the other letters existed. While I am a designer, (in fashion, and not in graphic arts), creating a set of letters was a challenge. Thankfully my talented artist son had pity on his poor mother and helped adjust and correct my mistakes until we cam up with a design that we love. It is so great to have talented family members! The VDMA design comes in a small 3.5″ design, as well as 5.5 inch and 7 inch designs. The sizes are designed for use on stoles and Bible markers for the small sizes, superfrontals or column orphreys for the medium and large size, and pulpit falls and wider column orphrey bands for the large embroidery design. I have stitched the VDMA in both black and red thread, and love them both. The design would look equally nice stitched in a variety of gold threads. This design will be available for purchase on finished vestments as well as on orphrey bands for use by those making their own church vestments. 
The final design headed off for embroidery is the Patonce Cross. This is one of my favorite cross designs. I fell in love with it the moment it surfaced in a collection of vintage hand embroidery designs that make up my collection of the St. Margaret Monastery Designs. The original embroidery designs date from the late 1800. They can be traced to the St. Margaret Monastery from Boston, which has ties back the original monastery in the UK. The vintage design had to be cleaned up and converted to a digital file. In the coming weeks and months, you will see this Patonce cross used in many ways. Here it is a stunning piece of machine embroidery worked in metallic gold threads.
This past week, I received back a set of hand embroidered small altar linens that have been lovingly hand embroidered by a very talented lady, Jan, and the cutting and prep work for the hemming has been done by Nancy. Both of these ladies are highly skilled seamstresses and embroiderers. I can hardly wait to show off their work!
The other form the Patonce cross takes on is as a main design in the soon to be forthcoming Luther Rose fabric. The Luther Rose was created by myself, along with the liturgical artist Edward Riojas. I promise to tell you more about the Luther Rose fabric shortly.
The Patonce Cross comes in a 3.5 inch, 6 inch and 9 inch size.
There is also a coordinating quatrefoild frame designed to fit the Patonce Cross.
I hope you enjoy looking over these machine embroidery designs, and perhaps begin planning a few projects of your own.
For those who are not Lutheran, we are working to create many additional machine embroidery designs for use in a variety of church seasons. We will keep you posted as the new designs are available.
Solo Dei Gloria
Be sure to visit our online store front Ecclesiastical Sewing where you may shop for Liturgical Fabrics, altar linen fabrics, church vestment making patterns, liturgical machine embroidery designs, church vestment trims and notions and so much more. You may also find us on Ecclesiastical Sewing on Facebook , Twitter, and Pinterest. Sing up for our mailing list at the bottom of the page on our online store front and receive a free copy of our Small Linens Booklet as our way of saying thank you for following along.
Filed under: Ecclesiastical Sewing Tagged: Cross Design 2 Ecclesiastical Sewing, Ecclesiastical Sewing, Religious Digital Machine Embroidery Designs
