Restoring the Art of Liturgical Needlecrafts
Apostolate of the Canons regular of St. John Cantius
Small Crosses
These little crosses show up everywhere – purificators, stoles, amices, antimensions, altar cloths, vesperales...
Here are some examples to show how much variation you can do while still maintaining a simple small cross. Tasteful. Beautiful.
The Reversible Cross Pattern
We’ve come up with a reversible cross for our purificators. We don’t like it when the back side looks icky, and this is our solution. You’ll want a magnifier to count threads for a true and straight little cross. Make sure it’s one of those that has the little inset bubble magnifier - and not just any bubble magnifier. We have two or three magnifiers that have the higher powered disk, but only one of them has a high enough power to comfortably count threads on fine linen. The one that works actually has a sharp edged lip around it on one side - think coke-bottle glasses. This thing has an extra thickness, maybe 1/16" of extra magnification. Get that one. If you wear glasses you can try a clip-on “Jeweler’s Eye Loupe.” They run about $10. Perhaps cheaters would help.
Machine Embroidery Cross File
This little half inch machine embroidery file comes in handy if you can’t see to embroider the cross stitch cross and you have access to an embroidery machine. It’s a tiny little thing and most machines will do a little nesting underneath because the stitches are so close together. To eliminate this problem, position your hooped linen in the correct starting position, then rotate the wheel to make one complete stitch. Pull the bobbin thread up to the surface and hold onto it as you begin the stitch out. Pause the machine after it does a few stitches and trim off the thread ends flush to the surface of the linen. Continue the stitch out. The file stitches the pattern twice which will lock in the threads.
Then there’s this little gem
...but it is not for the faint of heart.
