Some of you may now know of my work with the Guild of St Clare, repairing , preserving and making textiles and Sacred Vestments for the Traditional Latin Mass. Its something I am so proud to be a part of.
Often with Sacred Vestments it’s wonderful to repair and restore where possible. The history of these items and the religious significance they have makes them worthy of careful work.
A couple of meetings ago I acquired this Rochet from our Guild of St Clare meeting, a Rochet is a garment which has a specific role, only worn by Cardinals, Bishops or Prelates (sometimes others with Papal approval) and usually at a Cathedral Mass.
It has a fair few holes in it. Most of them have been quite tiny and easy to stitch together but this particular one was quite large, and sitting at the join of the shoulder yoke and stand collar. It’s placement, and the fact it went into the seam made it hard to stitch together without it misshaping the entire area so I decided to try something new to fix it.
I initially intended to take original warp and weft threads from the garment to make the repair as invisible as possible. However it is fragile, and my heart couldn’t bear to disturb the beautiful hand sewn French seams. So I decided to use white cotton which is not in breach of any requirements for this garment which must be made from fine linen or cotton.
The best way to start this kind of project would be to cut a perfect square in the fabric, and then ensuring your repair was a larger square set around it, however the fibres were quite fragile and I didn't want to make a bad problem worse. So I first placed my garment over a darning pad with the wrong side facing me. Then woven the threads (weft) across the hole making sure at the hole opening the needle and thread came out underneath and went back in the other side of the hole from the underneath. this ensured that the hole itself was hidden from the front. Once I had worked the weft threads I then began to weave the warp threads into the weft. I spaced them out and then added rows between to make the weave closer..ensuring it always worked in an 'over, under' pattern with the weft threads. Before and at the end of each warp or weft thread made a small holding stitch and woven the thread in and out of a few threads.
I carried on, until the patch was completely covered and then trimmed the excess at the back. Leaving about an inch of thread tails.
The piece will be pressed and then stitched back into the collar, but for a first attempt on as fine a fabric as this I am very pleased with the result! Next we are going to repair the lace! Exciting! Then replace the red cuffs with new red fabric as this particular one has faded on one sleeve!
More to come!
K x
