Wedding Parament Finished

Yesterday I delivered the wedding antependium to the church.  It was a dark, dreary day with not enough good light for a proper picture and I had to dodge rain showers to get a couple of quick shots outside. None of my pictures are very good, but time was pressing.  June is wedding season after all, and there is one scheduled for today at the church.

I'll show you the extra sleeve I added across centre back which holds a thin rod to keep the arms of the cross out.  It is imperative that these things hang perfectly straight and flat. The whole piece is stiffened with two layers of interfacing, one of which is a heavy decorator weight.  This made the parament extremely awkward to quilt on my domestic machine - it refused to fold up in the throat.  It was like quilting a board! Not surprisingly, my Bernina quilted feathers through all those layers with no issues.  

It fit the pulpit perfectly.  It was even darker inside than out and the pictures are disappointing.  However, you can get a sense of the effect. From the back of the church, only the golden rings at the centre are visible.

As you walk down the aisle and get a bit closer, the colours of the outer rings begin to emerge. Three shades for three strands of rings which link to form a cross.

The ministers were very pleased and frankly- if I may say so - it looked gorgeous in that setting.  

A wee hold up

The quilting has gone ok on the silk antependium - not perfect, but I wasn't shooting for perfect.  The scheme has been revised a bit and I've decided not to add multiple lines of cross hatching in the centre, but rather a single diagonal line.  In reality, there's only  2" of space there so this allows a bit of dimension to the surface.

As much as I was hoping to have this finished up by the end of the week, I have run short of fabric for the binding so will need a trip out of town to find some more white silk. (Imagine: an excuse to buy fabric...and as you will see in the next post, I`ve already added to my stash this week)

DWR Appliqué

Making it up as you go along means you have to be open to "let's try this and see it if works."  So far so good.  Having never made a Double Wedding Ring (DWR) before I was unsure if it would be tricky to line up the rings for easy matching.  I decided that logically the rings would meet at a 45° angle in the corner.

It was a snap to put them together (sometimes that's not a good sign!)  It took three full days to appliqué the rings onto the squares;  working with silk is very slow...and slippery!

After the rings were appliquéd, I held my breath and began to join the blocks into rows.  Thankfully, the rings matched up easily.

These seams will all be pressed open with a damp press cloth and then the rows will be joined together.  It's exciting when it starts to come together!

Wedding Antependium Begun

In the past I didn't show pictures of the paraments as they were being sewn, waiting instead until the congregation had seen them.  As this one is for weddings, I don't think that's really a consideration anymore as it won't be presented as a beginning to a new church season.  I hope I am not breaking any rules!

Because the design is based on a traditional double wedding ring block, there were lots of choices to be made about how best to approach the construction.  Generally the blocks are pieced, but appliquéing the rings is also an option and that's the method I chose.  Within that discipline, I also had to consider if I would appliqué individual blocks or simply do the rings on a wholecloth background.  I decided to do individual blocks;  this way will allow me to combine patchwork and appliqué in the construction...and also help define my space for quilting.  I began by applying a featherweight fusible interfacing to the back of the silk habotai. The antependium needs to hang straight on the pulpit so having the piece a bit stiff is an advantage.

These are new silk pins so they are nice and sharp;  notice the pins only go in the seam allowance.  They can leave holes in the delicate silk.

I also bought new scissors and they are awesomely sharp!  They are identical to my old ones, so a special thank you to Lesley who gave me the cute little scissors fob. It makes it easy to see which pair to pick up.

I cut freezer paper templates with the seam allowance removed, ironed them to the back of the interfaced silk and using a glue stick, folded the edges under.  I clipped the concave curve so it will turn smoothly but not the convex one which turns neatly without encouragement.

The rings fit nicely on the 6" blocks.

I printed out another full sized pattern to make it easy to check the placement of the rings as I go.

 The big trick will be hiding the pattern from Polly...