Advent
Painted blue silk crepe

Christmas
Winter-white South African polished cotton damask

Epiphany
Winter-green rough-woven silk

Lent & Holy Week
Purple cotton with crimson linen

Easter
White raw silk with satin binding

Pentecost
Red burn-out velvet

Season after Pentecost
Green linen damask

Fair linen
with crocheted edging

The Paraments at First Lutheran

In the mid-1990s, a few years after the renovation of the sanctuary at First Lutheran, a desire fornew paraments arose. At that time, we had commercially-made, matching sets in each of the liturgical colors of green, red, white and purple. The pieces were made of stiffened satin damask, edged with fringe, and each set was heavily embroidered with symbols appropriate to the season for which they were intended. During the renovation, the altar at First Lutheran had been taken from the wall beneath the stained glass window, and moved far out into the chancel. Seats for the congregation were arrayed on three sides of the altar, while the choir sat behind the altar on the fourth side. There had been a renewed emphasis on the Eucharist, with the altar as the focal point.

Full frontals, super frontals, frontlets and antipendia, the cloths traditionally used to decorate the altar, had by that time, often evolved into mini-banners or even pennants hung on the front of the altar. We wanted the altar to serve as the table around which we all gathered to share the Lord's supper. We needed a tablecloth worthy of the holy meal, one with beautiful color and texture, and on festival Sundays, abundant enough to drape the table on all four sides.

Vera Godsey, Gretchen Sorensen and I traveled to Britex, the largest fabric store in San Francisco, (and one of the largest in the world,) to see what we could find, hoping first of all for a lively green color, and secondarily for a fabric that would hang gracefully. Since the standard width for fabric is 45 inches, or occasionally 54 inches, we knew we would have to sew two lengths together to get a piece large enough to hang down on all four sides of the altar. After explaining to the clerk what we were looking for, he smiled and led us directly to a bolt of damask in heart-breaking green, enlivened by a subtily different shade of green in the woven-in floral pattern. What's more, the fabric was linen, the traditional fiber used on the altar. We really knew the Spirit had led us when we learned that the fabric was 72 inches wide, a width we didn't know existed and would never have thought to ask for. We could now make the cloth without a center seam.

That was the beginning of a new series of paraments. Here are photos of what we've done. We hope the stories about each set will inspire others to think about what might work best in their particular setting, and then to use their skills and resources to the glory of God.