Stitching with Saints

Stitching with Saints

Come learn about some holy women who loved to work with their hands, including Our Blessed Mother, Saint Zelie Martin, and Saint Rose of Lima. Then be inspired to try some stitching projects of your own. In this post we provide links to resources to learn about lace making and embroidery. We also have links for beautiful Catholic fabric to inspire your next sewing project. 

Note: We have a number of video links in this post, and we have noticed on some devices (with lazy load), the video link images do not appear. In this case, please click on the text link to go to the videos.

Saint Rose of Lima

Saint Rose of Lima is the patron saint of embroidery.

Embroidery can be a fun way to learn how to sew. A project we love that can also make a sweet gift is a hand emboidered flour sack towel. Simply sketch your design with pencil on a portion of the towel, attatch an emboidery hoop, and start stitching (the video below gives some great ideas for a variety of stitches).

Saint Zélie Martin

Saint Zélie Martin, the mother of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, was a talented lacemaker.

Lacemaking is not something we have tried at Sparkles and Sprinkles, but we think it sounds like a fun challenge. How about you? Do you want to give lacemaking a try? We have gathered together a few videos about lace making to help you get started. The first one is from Alençon, the town where Saint Zélie and her family lived. 

zelie martin lace

We found this picture of beautiful lace made by Saint Zélie in the book Thérèse and Lisieux by Pierre Descouvement.

Can’t see the image? Click here to see the beginning lace making video of lace from around the world.

Our Blessed Mother Mary

We can imagine Our Blessed Mother sewing for the Holy Family.

Making a baby Jesus doll or making clothes for a baby doll could be a beautiful way to think about Our Blessed Mother as you sew. For a little inspiration, we are posting a photo of a Waldorf-style baby Jesus doll we made a few years ago. Perhaps sometime we’ll make tutorial on how to make this sweet little doll.

jesus waldorf doll

Sewing Sisters

Many religious sisters spend time making beautiful vestments and church linens.

sister wilhelmina

You may have heard of Sister Wilhelmina, whose body was found to be incorrupt. She was the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles. This religious order may be best known for their beautiful singing, but they also spend part of their days sewing vestments for the Church.

 

This video gives a glimpse into the daily life of the sisters of Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles (vestment making is mentioned around minute 3).

Are you inspired to make vestments? A fun way to start might be making miniature vestments, as used in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd classes. Here is a link for a pattern sold on Etsy.

Catholic Fabric We Love

A sweet friend introduced us to Spoonflower a few years ago. We had no idea that this delightful treasure of fabric with Catholic designs existed. We are so happy to share with you some of our favorite Catholic fabric designers on Spoonflower…

spoonflower catholic fabric

Littleliteraryclassics on Spoonflower has fabric to make simple pocket saint dolls. This is a darling little project for the beginning seamstress. They can be sewn by hand or by machine. In this photo, we used pinking shears to cut around the edge so that the fabric did not even have to be turned inside out for children making their very first (big) stitches.

marigold catholic goods co

Marigold Catholic Goods Co. has beautiful designs! If I could, I would buy them all. The color palette and designs bring such peace and joy. I think you will enjoy them too. We made a pennant banner for a garden party using the “Consider how the wildflowers grow” fabric from this designer. Definitely check out the other designs in this shop too! And if you are not up for a sewing project, but love the designs, you can find these beautiful designs on mugs, scarves, blankets and more in the Catholic All Year Marketplace.

spoonflower hail mary fabric

Our homeschool group sewing group used the “Hail Mary” fabric from The Little Rose Shop to make some doll pillows and blankets. The Little Rose Shop has so many other sweet designs as well!

marigold catholic goods co. pennant

“Sew” delightful… if you would like to make a pennant banner too, we recommend Leigh Ann Wilke’s tutorial . She figured out the math on how to make the best use of the fabric! So it’s a breeze to make it. 

We hope you’ve enjoyed reflecting on sewing with us.

You might also enjoy these posts… 

proverbs sewing

Sewing Scripture: Cursive and Printing Practice Pages

blossoms

Blossoms on the sidewalk: Embracing Creative Messes

doll and me dress

Easy pillowcase dresses: Doll and Me Dress Tutorial

Note:  Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links.  Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links.  We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Hand-sewn doll clothes

Hand-sewn doll clothes

Ready to make a cute new outfit for your doll?  It’s so easy with this beautiful pattern book by Erin Hentzel!  We found this book to be so much better than simply using a packaged pattern.  The photos are adorable, and very helpful for the young seamstress.  Even if you have not sewn before, the book gives step by step instructions for making the clothes from start to finish.  If you are an advanced seamstress, this book is still wonderful!  Each pattern shows the level of difficulty, assigning a certain number of stars to show the level.  The patterns are for 18″ dolls (American Girl-sized dolls).

erin hentzel sew your own doll clothes
American Girl Doll Clothes hand sewn

We decided to try 3 of the patterns in this book, and sew them all by hand.  Of course it would be faster to sew the clothes with a machine, but they can all be sewn by hand as well.

We chose a coordinating solid and print to make this ensemble: a purse, a top, and shorts.  The best fabric to use for these patterns is light-weight cotton quilting fabric.

To get started, watch our YouTube video for tips on cutting out the pattern (especially helpful for beginners).

 

Some tips for sewing your ensemble by hand…

We made a few modifications to the instructions to make the hand sewing easier.  For the purse, we trimmed off the edges of the fabric to about an 1/8″ from the seam.  This made it so that when we sewed the front and the back of the purse together, we did not have to sew through so many layers.  (We made our first purse without trimming the fabric, and we found it could be a bit difficult to sew through so many layers of fabric, especially for little hands.)

We chose to use snaps to fasten the back of the shirt together. (Click here to watch our video on sewing snaps.)The pattern book suggests Velcro; however, hand sewing through Velcro can be a bit cumbersome.  We simply folded over each side of the back of the shirt by a quarter of an inch, and made a seam.  Then we sewed on a snap set at the top, and another snap set about 2 inches from the top.  Just for fun, we embellished the back of the top with little bows too.

The modification we made for the shorts was to use 1/8″ elastic, rather than the wider elastic suggested in the book.  This allowed us to not be as concerned about keeping our stitches super close to the edge of the casing.  We used a 13″ length of 1/8″ elastic and then tied a knot about 1″ from the end to secure it, rather than sewing through the elastic.

Another helpful tip for sewing these items by hand is to use a ruler and a pencil to mark off a 1/4″ from the edge of your fabric when needed.  This will help the stitches to be straighter, especially for beginners.

Of course for the clothes to stay together well, the stitches should be small.  1/8″ or smaller in length.  We used a running stitch for all of the items we sewed; however, to make them even sturdier, a back stitch could be used.  We chose to thread our needle and sew with double thickness of thread.

We found “finger pressing” – using your finger to fold and press the fabric, rather than an iron – worked well for these patterns.  (However, ironing the whole piece of fabric before cutting out the patterns is important!)  Using finger pressing, rather than an iron makes it easier for children to work on these projects on their own without having the use a hot iron.  It is helpful in some cases (such as the hem of the shorts) to pin after finger pressing.  

We have only tried three patterns from Sew in Style: Make Your Own Doll Clothes, but we can’t wait to try more!  If you would like to find out more, or purchase the book, please click on the image.  Happy sewing!

Enjoy your new doll outfit!

Our 10-year-old had fun taking these pictures with her doll playing outside, sporting her cute new outfit…

American Girl Doll Clothes hand sewn

If you love dolls as much as we do, you might enjoy some of our other doll ideas:  knit a doll hat and doll party ideas.

american girl doll knit hat
American Girl doll party ideas

Note:  Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links.  Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links.  We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.