Religious Embroidery

A few weeks ago while showing off my collection of cotton dishcloths, I mentioned that I would be leaving town for a short visit to Kansas for my mother's 75th birthday. Well, I have gone and come home again. It was a wonderful trip and I did pass out all of my dishcloths. The first two went to a nice lady sitting next to us who was traveling to Texas for her niece's wedding, one for her and one for the bride. When we arrived in Kansas City, we were picked up by a high school friend I had not seen in over 15 years. She got the next four. All the others were distributed to various relatives, and my Dad even got a chance to use his and report back to me while I was still there. He loved it!

But today I am not going to focus on dishcloths. In fact, I plan to drop that topic for a good long time! I must move on to something different!

This friend who picked us up at the airport just happens to be the Prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles in Kansas City, Missouri. One of the things this order of Sisters does to support themselves is make vestments for priests to wear while celebrating Holy Mass. They are also in the process of learning how to do the traditional hand and machine embroidery that seems to be a dying art among even the religious. I had the privilege to see some of their work in progress, and that is what I wanted to show you today.


This is just a small sample of the machine embroidery thread which was given to this little group of nuns by an order of nuns from O'Fallon, Missouri who used to do this type of work and no longer does. I am sure they were quite happy to pass on their skills as well as their supplies so this work can continue. You can read a little about this HERE if you are interested.


You can see how old these boxes are, and there were drawers and drawers full of boxes just like this. What a treasure!


Isn't that silver thread just beautiful?


The gold is even more beautiful in person. And so heavy to hold too!


This is my old high school friend, now called Mother since she is the Prioress, showing off their wall of vestment patterns. The machine in the corner of the picture is an old Singer which is run by foot power! It's a treadle machine and they say it works like a dream.


This looks like a mass of gold worms, but in fact it is only one of the many boxes of different kinds of gold used for decorating vestments. No wonder they are so heavy!


This wall of old library card catalog drawers was full of every variety of hand embroidery thread you could imagine. What a clever way to make use of good furniture that is no longer needed in libraries.


Here are some of the machine embroidered samples that are used on vestments.


This is a very old embroidery stand set up with the piece in progress stretched in the middle. The dove that is being copied was machine embroidered, but the work in progress is being done by hand.


This is a piece being done by hand on another old frame. The detail is stunning.


Here is the face before shading has been added. Still so beautiful.


This is a close-up of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart. The centers of the flowers have not been stitched yet and appear to be drawn thread. Isn't the shading just beautiful?


In this picture, you can get an idea of the little workstation where one Sister spends a good portion of her day with her hands busy, and many prayers being offered for the holy priest who will wear this piece of art on his vestment someday.

In the next post, I will show you another form of handwork that these Sisters do, and which I tried a while back and could not master. It's called bobbin lace.

Happy Stitching!

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