On this page titled 'Traditional Ecclesiastical Fabrics' you will find a group of damask, brocade and tapestry fabrics. 

Let me define what I mean by those terms: A 'damask' is all one color with the pattern woven in.  A 'brocade' is the same thing except that the pattern is picked out in a metallic thread - gold or silver.  A 'tapestry' is a multi-colored fabric.

This collection offers an extrordiarily wide range of ecclesiastical fabrics that have been known and loved for generations. 

These fabrics are all imported from the manufacturer, M. Perkins & Son, in England (www.MPerkins.co.uk). 

While the thumb-nails shown below show what the patterns look like, they cannot represent the actual colors.  A good example is the fabric 'Wakefield'. This fabric contains a great deal of gold (which does not show in the photo). Wakefield is a truly gorgeous fabric - and you'd never know it from the photo.  The same is true of the shades of the colors.  The St. Nicholas shade of green is very different from the Fairford shade of green. Nor can I show you the full array of colors that each fabric comes in.  Wonderful though the Internet is, it does not reproduce color accurately! 

Additionally, the thumbnails cannot show the differences in the size of the patterns. While the size of the Chelmsford pattern appears to be similar to that of St. Nicholas, the Chelmsford repeat is 7 1/2 inches and the St. Nicholas repeat is 27 inches. 

If you want to see better pictures of these fabrics, go to the M. Perkins & Son website at: www.MPerkins.co.uk 

Now that I've told you what these thumb-nails are not good foor, let me suggest what they are good for:

It's my experience that we've become accustomed to seeing only a few ecclesiastical fabric patterns - the 'standards' of Agnus Dei, Ely Crown, Tudor Rose, Normandy and the Coronation tapestry. These photos give you an excellent opportunity to view many other handsome, traditional liturgical patterns.

 

Designing Vestments Using the 'Traditional' Fabrics:

Please remember what I believe: The beauty of our vestments depends upon excellence of design and the quality of our workmanship; not upon how much money we spend.

These traditional fabrics cost more than my polyesters and silks.  The prices begin at around $30/yard and top out at about $200/yard. Many parishes are able and happy to spend this kind of money on their vestments.  Many are not - and yet, would love to use these fabrics.  And, this is possible!  I often help people design lovely vestments in which the major fabric is one of the silks or polyesters and a small amount of one of the traditional fabrics is used for decoration.  The effect is excellent!

I not infrequently receive a request to 'Send me a sample of every fabric you have in all the colors available'.  Gracious!  I can't do that!  The expense quite aside, I'd spend half my life cutting! 

The process of designing vestments follows an orderly and useful progression.  Let's talk about that:

Budget: The first thing you need to do is determine how much you want to - or, can - spend: How much the entire project will cost and/or how much you want to pay for your fabric per yard.  There's no sense looking at $200/yard fabric if your budget is telling you $40/yard.  That's just silly.

Color: Our liturgical colors are a significant consideration for vestment makers.  The more we understand about our color traditions, the richer our designs will be liturgically.  As we begin to speak about vestment construction, I'd like you to take a few minutes to visit a very special website that discusses our liturgical colors.  This site was put up by a priest in my diocese and I think he did an excellent job with it.  I hope you enjoy it and find it as useful and informative as I have. 

http://fullhomelydivinity.org/articles/colors%20full%20page.htm  

But, it's more complex than that: Added to this consideration must be an understanding of what shade of the color will work best in your worship space.  A large, brightly lit worship space will respond differently to color than will a more intimate space that is softly lit.  This is an issue you cannot consider until you have samples in your hands.

And, of course, you can only make these decisions standing in the middle pews.  You can't 'see' how the shade will 'work' if you're looking at it from 12 inches away - or sitting at your kitchen table!  People forget that.

Scale: This has to do with the size of the repeat and its relationship to the vestments you will be constructing.  If you are designing only a stole, you'll want to settle on a pattern that is small (Chelmsford or Ely Crown, for instance). But, if you're also making the chasuble to go with the stole, you'll want to choose a pattern that is larger because a small pattern on a large area will tend to look busy - the scale will be wrong and the vestment will appear unbalanced.  In this case, you might consider Fairford or Winchester or St. Margaret.  If you're going to construct a large frontal (and you can afford it!), you'll want to look at St. Nicholas with its 27 inch repeat.

So: Long before you even think of looking at fabric samples, you should have made these three decisions - Budget, Color, Scale. When you can give me that information, I know immediately which samples you need to see.

For more information about the individual fabrics, please contact me at obunny@roadrunner.com and request the Online Fabric Catalogue.  I will send you this catalogue by email attachment. This catalogue will allow you to go back to the photographs and examine them with better information. From here, we can go forward to consider which samples you would like to see. 

I do request a sample deposit of $25 for these traditional fabrics.  This deposit will be refunded to you when my samples come home to me.  Or, you may put the deposit toward a purchase.

My polyester and silk samples are sent on request.