Tag Archives: Our Lady

Holy Word

As I was working on the previous post I wrote about how the poetry and old language reminded me of ornament on clothing. In fact, I vaguely remembered some snippets of Scripture that refer to “variety”, with this meaning of elaborate ornament. When I went searching, I found this:

“The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety.”
[Psalms 44:10]

In fact, I was swept into the beauty of the beginning of that Psalm, too, which is (was) chanted at various times in the ancient liturgy of the Church, such as at the clothing of religious sisters, or at the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and other Marian feasts, and at the feasts of some Holy Virgins, such as Saint Lucy. The chant is titled Eructavit cor meum, if you wish to search further on the subject, you can use this Chant database or other online resources. It goes:

[2] My heart hath uttered a good word: I speak my works to the king; My tongue is the pen of a scrivener that writeth swiftly. [Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum; dico ego opera mea regi. Lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis.]

[3] Thou art beautiful above the sons of men: grace is poured abroad in thy lips; therefore hath God blessed thee for ever. [Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum, diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis; propterea benedixit te Deus in aeternum.] (Source)

And then a bit later is the part about variety (the whole psalm is gloriously beautiful, I am struggling not to post it all!):

[9] Myrrh and stacte and cassia perfume thy garments, from the ivory houses: out of which [Myrrha, et gutta, et casia a vestimentis tuis, a domibus eburneis; ex quibus delectaverunt te]

[10] The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety. [filiae regum in honore tuo. Astitit regina a dextris tuis in vestitu deaurato, circumdata varietate.] (And there’s the varietate that I was remembering.)

[11] Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy people and thy father’s house.[Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam; et obliviscere populum tuum, et domum patris tui.] (You might recognize this as an antiphon chant often found in Marian liturgies and the Masses of Holy Virgins.)

[12] And the king shall greatly desire thy beauty; for he is the Lord thy God, and him they shall adore. [Et concupiscet rex decorem tuum, quoniam ipse est Dominus Deus tuus, et adorabunt eum.]

In any case, in the interest of comparison I was going to post a modern translation, too, but I was appalled to find that it is so changed that though for some scholarly purposes it may be ‘more accurate’ linguistically it destroys my relationship with the Holy Word. When centuries of chant, art, poetry, commentary, and prayer and based on a specific holy text, and millions of believers have lived and loved that text, to toss it out and replace it with something ‘more accessible’ or ‘more accurate’ completely misses the point.

In the interests of love of my Holy Mother Church, here are the two aforementioned antiphons in a variety of musical settings:

Our Lady of Aparecida’s blue mantle

Leave a reply

I did finally finish a blue mantle for Our Lady. The combination is really lovely, I think.

The fabric was a rather heavy knit with a touch of stretch but lovely drape. Too difficult to fold and hem, so I used the trim to cover the loose edge. It doesn’t seem particularly prone to fraying, but I can add a ribbon to the inside to cover the edge when I have time.

Here I am trying it on. I marked both the mantilla and the mantle with an embroidered circle where the crown pin will go through the fabric so that I use the same spot each time and don’t damage the fabric randomly.

And then I remembered I had a pin from the original cape to hold it shut, and found that, and ta-da, all done. A future iteration could have embroidered floral/vine sort of patterns around the border. But this fabric is not necessarily the one to take embroidery. I’ll experiment later.

One thing I wanted to try is making a different dress for underneath. I have a lovely cherry/rose sort of colored satin that is light and drapey. I want to see how that would work for a different style of dress. The original image has a carved drapey gown. Not sure I can duplicate the look, but it would be interesting to experiment.

Mantilla detour

Leave a reply

The blue mantle is still underway, as I got sidetracked making a lovely lace mantilla… made from the remnant lace I scrounged at a couple of shops in Barcelona:

It was fun learning to sew the embroidered laces (for now tacked together gently without any knots, so they can be undone and redone if necessary), and it seemed quite possible that it’s not too difficult to embroider on netting to make one’s own designs. I used a piece of sheer gold-white organza underneath as a support, though I’m not sure that’s necessary.

Planning a dress

Leave a reply

I know that some people like to work spontaneously, but I am gifted with the love of planning. So this is how I’m strategizing the new dress and mantle for Our Lady of Aparecida.

The unvested image already has a draping robe, loose hair, folded hands, and a garland of flowers around the neckline of the robe. The hands are a key feature when designing clothing: I like to have them remain visible. The image is also very egg-shaped, so securing clothing needs to be done around the shoulders or around the hands, but would be harder to do around the waist.

My main goals are as follows:
1) to make a red dress for her to wear under the blue mantle; I’d like the dress to be quite complex and include a gold under-gown (see below)
2) to make a white wimple of some sort
3) to make a new blue mantle
4) to make a dramatic Spanish-style floor-length lace mantilla

The dress: One image that struck me as I was researching the dresses of Our Lady and the dresses of historic queens was this one of Queen Anne of Bretagne. The red silk overdress and gold brocade underdress are a stunning combination. The square neckline is not as interesting, nor are the bell-sleeves. But the skirt part is very interesting.

This dress (of Queen Henrietta Maria of England) has some interesting lace layering at the top and on the sleeve cuffs which is interesting. The puffy sleeves are not so interesting. The idea of making a gold skirt with white lace tunic-top, belted, and then a red satin overdress over that, is one possibility.

This skirt is interesting for the layering. I am thinking that the skirt could be built on a cotton support, with strips of satin alternating with overlapping layers of organza and/or lace to make this kind of effect. The red satin outer dress could be fairly smooth, held shut above and below the hands (with some small stitches)and trimmed with gold. This way it would hang open over the layered skirt, but be fairly closed at the top.

Another thing that is striking in this image is the ermine-lined cloak. I have some fake fur, quite light and fine, which could be used to trim the mantle. I’m thinking perhaps an inner trim (using inner and outer trims is interesting! The mantle will be initially lined with cotton (the weight used for bedsheets) to provide stability for the beading and embroidery. Once that decoration is done (which I will probably do on a hoop before even cutting the fabric), I will line the mantle with gold satin to cover the inner stitching. I couldn’t find blue velvet but got a lovely heavy textured ‘silk’ (polyester) which has some body.

Once the dress is done, I plan to make a wimple and veil like a religious sister might use, just of white satin, falling above the hands in front and almost to the waist in back. I plan to cover this with a layer of decorative lace so it isn’t too plain. That and the mantle (which normally has a hood, though I could do it just with a high collar in back, like a priest’s cope) will have a fixed hole for the crown pin, trimmed with stitching so it’s stronger and in a fixed place (as opposed to stabbing the pin in a different spot each time).

And finally, I am a huge fan of the Spanish style mantillas, and have a stash of Spanish lace, so I intend to make a lovely light cloud-like mantilla that will go from the head to the floor. Bridal, as it were.

This image of mine is only about 10 inches high, so we will be exercising our clumsy fingers and bad eyes to do this! But it should be very fun. I’ll post as I go… including surely many re-stitchings when I do it wrong the first time!

Our Lady’s Mantles

Leave a reply

Last year I began some simple sewing projects, which eventually led to an all out festival of sewing clothing for images of the saints. Friends came over and we sat sewing mantles for Our Lady, little chasubles for the Baby Jesus or Crucified Christ, robes for Saint Joseph, and so on. Since none of us had any experience (and all of us had grand ideas) much time was spent trying things, seeing the mistakes, and re-doing them. For myself, this is the very beginning of a long experiment (perhaps) in understanding fabric and dressing. It was also a bit amusing, because when some friends first became enthusiastic about making clothing for saints images I do believe I said, “Even as a child I never was interested in dressing my dolls, and I’m not really interested in making a wardrobe of seasonal clothing for Our Blessed Mother either.” A month later I was totally immersed in a white satin robe for the Baby Jesus and a gorgeous blue velvet mantel with rose-colored lining for His Mother and Ours.

I soon began to realize how much material was needed. We had already pillaged the trim I had brought from New York, carefully measured to be suitable for making two semi-gothic chasubles. Now reduced in quantity to be suitable for…well, trimming some chalice veils or maniples? I also had no lace and not enough variety of gold and silver trim. Brazilian trim is notoriously carnivalesque. I spent a couple of days in Barcelona stocking up on more suitable notions, though no liturgical trim was evident to compare with that available at LaLame, in New York. That said, the lace trim was a dream.

I took the standard blue mantle off of my Lady of Aparecida, and stripped it of all its trimmings, which I planned to replace with finer things. However once it was de-trimmed I realized the fabric was not very lovely, so that got set aside until I can get back to a fabric store to buy some nice blue satin and velvet. Meanwhile I dressed her in a simple red robe (pinned on for now) and a huge lace mantilla that makes a cloud-like form around her. I love that. I am currently fascinated with lace.

In exploring dressing the saints, however, I began to wonder where the various traditions arose and where and when and why they can be flexible (or not). Too much creativity, or the wrong direction in ideas, becomes blasphemous. Yet there are many Madonnas who are regularly re-dressed in new gowns either for seasonal feasts or for their own annual feasts. Enormous care and workmanship goes into making these gowns. I wondered where, for instance, Our Lady of Aparecida’s standard blue mantle comes from, as there are older images (paintings) of her that show different designs, though always blue. Our Lady of Good Success is dressed in a variety of gowns, in a variety of colors, and this is true both of the original image in Quito as well as the images kept for private devotion in homes and chapels.

So one idea I had this morning was to browse through images of what queens wore in paintings from the 14th to 19th centuries. And then look at photos of images of Our Lady, to see how she is dressed in various times and places. Paintings of Our Lady I have in quantity (bookmarked from wikimedia commons). So it will perhaps be interesting to browse that imagery and see if anything interesting emerges.

Just for example, here is Our Lady of Monserrat, showing the image as it appears day to day, and as it appears dressed for a festival (in the late 19th century).

Reading in bed

Leave a reply

Why is reading in bed a thing? I recall it being not only a thing, but a wonderful thing when I was a kid. I would read voraciously, even reading under the covers with a flashlight after lights out time. Lights out meant exactly “no more reading.”

At some point I stopped reading in bed. I think this was in part because books became larger and heavier. One can’t easily hold and read a large hardcover book in bed, at least not without a lap desk, cushions to support a semi-seated position, prism glasses and so on.

I’ve also rarely had a bedside table. I still don’t. Usually because the bedroom is too small to fit bedside tables next to the bed. Without a bedside table, there’s no handy reading light nor place to put your book when done reading.

And the fact is that even now that I have a kindle and a cell phone, both of which are designed to facilitate reading in bed, I really prefer to read books on paper, so I generally read in a chair in the day, not at night in bed. I especially love reading while holding a pencil and making little annotations as I read.

So there ya go. Life without reading in bed. It’s sort of like life without breakfast in bed: it looks rather intriguing and picturesque, but it’s not part of my life and doesn’t seem worth a big effort.