Wednesday, September 17, 2008

St. Gregory's Abbey




Yesterday I went to St. Gregory's Abbey with members of the GR sewing guild. Seven monks live at this Episcopal Benedictine Abbey near Three Rivers.

They have quite a collection of beautifully decorated vestments. The monk who is in charge of them was very generous in showing us the amazing items.

The first three pictures are of a stole from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The embroidery is all done in various metallic threads. The intricacy of the stitching is unbelievable. The metallic threads have tarnished and dulled over time, and you can see that the silk fabric is quite frayed. Still it was quite something to see.

The other pieces we saw are much more modern--from the 20th century. Most of the elaborate embroidery was done by one person, Sister Scholastica, who is now deceased.

The photos are primarily from stoles and chasubles which are worn at different times in the church calendar.

Enjoy the pictures! And does anyone know the trick to getting the photos to be oriented in the right direction? I figured out that they always go with the longer way vertical and the shorter way horizontal. Is there a way to work with this?




4 comments:

pam T said...

Very cool pics! As to your question - I believe you have to change the orientation of the pic (which way it is facing) on whatever photo program you are using, where you can also crop it (get the backgrounds off)... That's how I do it. If you still have problems check with Diane, the blog angel... she's a wiz with this stuff!
pam T (WI)

Marty S said...

Well, that's the mystery of the whole thing. I cropped and rotated, as necessary, in the photo program before I uploaded. The photos of the antique stole stayed in the correct orientation, but the others changed. The only variable seemed to be that the photos always move so that they were taller than they were wider.

Maybe it's related to a sort of effort to use technology make us all seem taller and slimmer. Hey, it's a thought!
Marty S

heidibeads said...

I have the same problem all the time and I just keep playing until it's right and because I never pay attention I haven't the foggiest idea how it's done - funny huh? I love the embroidery and kept thinking that it's amazing that a person did that and not some machine. Wow - wonderful.

Robin said...

Beautiful photos! Droool, drooooool! Thanks... for photos like these, I don't mind turning myself sidewise or even upside down.

I'm guessing that maybe you uploaded the original version of your picture to blogger, rather than the one you rotated. I've uploaded hundreds of images to various blogs and they've always remained the same orientation as my file, unchanged in any way by blogger.

I do have a system to help prevent me from uploading the wrong version. After I've rotated, cropped, sized, etc. my image, I click "save as" and then save it in a special folder called "BlogPhotos." Within that folder I have many other folders arranged by topic, such as BJP.

Hope that helps! Robin A.