The Vestment Maker. Altarworthy.

 

The Vestment Maker.

With her Whidbey Island Vestment Company,

Emily Uhl aims to bring beauty into The Liturgy.

Read more at http://nwcatholic.org/vestmentmaker​.

Correction: Head Seamstress Claire Wilson's name

was mis-spelled in this video due to an error in the print story.

Available on YouTube at

YOU TUBE

Illustration: ALTARWORTHY

The following Text and Illustrations are from

ALTARWORTHY BLOG

When I was about five or six years old, my Dad helped an elderly colleague move. I never knew her name or even where she was moving, but she was a grand-motherly type and her tiny house was filled with “lady things”.

Being raised with my brother by a single Dad, this was the first time I recall ever seeing female things. They were alien. Fascinating. I wanted to touch them all and the kind woman noticed this and took time to show me some of her treasures as she packed them into boxes.

Before we left that evening, she opened a tiny lacquered box, with herons edged in gold, and asked if I knew what the silver dome was inside. I couldn’t guess. She asked if I would learn to sew someday, and I assured her “Oh yes!”, without any idea what she was talking about. She gave me the box to take home and I never saw her again.

Illustration: ALTARWORTHY

​Decades later that box had remained with me without any real effort on my part. It wasn’t an important trinket. I don’t know why I still have it.

But, ten years ago, I started repairing Vestments (how I became Catholic is a different story), but I suddenly recalled that little orange box and pulled it out to use it for the first time.

A full forty years had passed and I saw it with new eyes.

The graceful name, engraved on the side, stopped me in my tracks . . . Maria.