I admit I was slightly tempted to fiddle about with this and change the leaves to shamrocks being that it’s almost St. Patrick’s Day. I restrained myself but if you want a shamrock pall, let me know! I think it would be awfully fun to embroider shamrocks…

So a while ago I was reading about Islamic designs used in Christian vestments, quite fascinating and it got me looking at this lovely arabesque pattern.

I decided to work it up as a pall on a linen ground using silk and cotton threads. No gold metal threads or lace, just the embroidery. I used cotton for the vine, silk for everything else, oh, a little cotton in the border too.

I have discovered that there as many ways to do things as there are people. Is that not so? Anyway having tried out a few ways of doing things I am more or less settled on making palls by mounting the embroidery upon a piece of acid free heavy card stock and then sewing a tiny linen purificator onto the back. I find it upsetting to rough up the embroidery by turning it inside out…

Here’s the lacing:

Another temptation… surly I could use an appropriate tape to hold the fabric to the board… Indeed, but I’m daft enough to lace it all together by hand. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to have sticky tape hidden away on the inside… 😦

The purificator is hand sewn as well, even those minute mitred corners, because… well just because…

Anyway, a few other things on the go.
Making some parament sets (burses & veils) and embroidering another version of this rose cross design, which I worked up a couple of years ago as a vestment medallion but then did nothing with it…
anyway once the companion piece is worked up I intend to mount these onto lovely fabric as a splendid parament set…

Back to work. Hope you’re well. Thanks for reading!