(original post 19 Feb 2013)
Okay, y'all. Nothing exceeds like excess, right? So somehow, when it was mentioned that it would be lovely to have a beautiful new altar cloth for our beautiful old new church for the Feast of Pentecost, Auntie Liadain lost her mind and popped up and said "Oh, I can do that, I have just the idea!"
And you know what, I DO. Been wanting to work something from this design for years, and could never grasp the "thread" of translating it to blackwork - until I offered to make it for the church. I began with this -
Okay, y'all. Nothing exceeds like excess, right? So somehow, when it was mentioned that it would be lovely to have a beautiful new altar cloth for our beautiful old new church for the Feast of Pentecost, Auntie Liadain lost her mind and popped up and said "Oh, I can do that, I have just the idea!"
And you know what, I DO. Been wanting to work something from this design for years, and could never grasp the "thread" of translating it to blackwork - until I offered to make it for the church. I began with this -
an illustration from the 1896 l'Arte de Crietien de Egypte - Motifs de Broderie Copte", by Therese de Dillmont (DMC). (you can download these books in PDF at Antique Pattern Library - enjoy!). As you can see, this is a pattern for a needleweaving/pattern-darning technique. Took some fiddling and experimentation to see exactly how to translate this into the squares of counted blackwork, but once I got a grip on the center section and one of the leaves, I had it and we were off to the races.
My first translation was pretty literal - except the bunny. The bunny didn't quite belong on Orthodox altar vestments.
Of course Auntie Liadain can never leave well enough alone, and so we elaborated into a slightly larger version. I enbiggened it to fit the size of the altar (39" square) which translated to 1 stitch on the chart = 3 stitches on fabric. This would call for really REALLY wide evenweave linen. The widest and best I found was25-count round yard linen from Hedgehog Handworks, which is beautiful beautiful touchy-feely sumptuous stuff (and ON SALE through February, y'all!).
This made really big empty spaces, of course, which called for fillings,and then I rethought the drape of the shape- Eastern Orthodox churches have lots of candles, and censors full of burning coals, and all sorts of stuff going on. A closer fit would be better,and so I "uncornered" the design-
-and BEHOLD, I decided that I had designed this design about as designedly as it could possibly get, and I backed slowly away from the pencils. Until, of course, i remembered that there were more bits needed for a full set.
the aer- (never sure exactly how to spell that,
but it's a piece used in the Great Entrance/
preparation of the Eucharist)
-and a pair of chalice covers....
Okay. NOW I am done designing.
Pentecost is also the Festival of First Fruits, and green is the color. I won't bore you with the details of choosing the right threads for this project - let's just say that I now have a HUGE stash of assorted green silks, cottons, and linen threads! - but I finally decided on materials from the Caron Collection - for all outlines, "Impressions" (50/50 silk/wool) in emerald variegated, for fillings "Waterlilies" (stranded silk) also in emerald variegated. There will be silver threads for accent, and most likely some sort of silver trim/ fringe/galloon/something to finish the whole thing off -here's very bad shot of the color test that decided the issue-
Hoping my progress pictures will show the color better, but the variegated threads add a great deal of depth without my poor old brain having to choose a shade of green for every single leaf.
And there you have it, the rest of the story of what I've been doing these last few months. Next up will be Getting Brave Enough To Cut The Linen!
And there you have it, the rest of the story of what I've been doing these last few months. Next up will be Getting Brave Enough To Cut The Linen!