Clerical stole made from Guatemalan wool woven and silk jacquard, with machine applique and metallic thread quilting, muslin batting, completed December 2007.

I made this for my husband for his first Advent season as a “real, live” minister here in Los Alamos.

The process on this one started out kind of frustrating, because I spent a lot of time with paper and pencil and embroidery threads, not really knowing what I wanted to do. We visited the one fine fabric store in all of New Mexico, up in Taos, and picked the fabrics, along with a gorgeous blue silk shantung, but without a clear plan for the design.

So then, as the time grew closer and closer, I started to think about what the most compelling images are of December, of the Advent story, of winter, and I thought of the star, hanging there in the dark sky. There are more stars in the skies here than I have ever seen before, to the point of jaw-dropping awe every time I look up at night, so this stuck with me.

I wanted to keep this very simple, in the interest of both time and John’s personal style, and to maintain the richness of the fabrics. I think it goes well as a compliment to his Celtic Stole, too.

Here’s a better look at the silk panels. The fabric is fragile and strong all at the same time — the edges ravel like crazy, but once finished it has a lovely body. For the applique at the top, I originally used a freezer paper template, but the adhesive was too much and the points fell apart as I tried to remove it. I ended up cutting it out three times before it worked.

And here is a closer view of the play from one side to the other. The double lines read very well from the middle of the sanctuary, though do tend to get lost toward the back. I’m okay with that, because there is still a hint of the sparkle even from far away.

For some reason I don’t have a picture of the back, but I stitched a free form chalice with a spiral sort of motif in the same metallic threads.

This entry was posted by Jess on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 10:22 am and is filed under Fabric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.