Barbara Nichols, Directress of the Ecclesiastical Vestment and Embroidery Guild
In the summer of 2022, I received a phone call from Jeanine Adinaro from Salado, Texas. She had read in the Epistle about some of the work that the Ecclesiastical Vestment and Embroidery Guild (the Guild), which I run, had done for a church in New Jersey. She would be visiting New Jersey on vacation and wanted to visit the Guild. Unfortunately, we weren’t planning to meet while she was in town, so I invited her to my home to see some of the projects on which I was working. After several hours, she left with a lot of excitement to go home and start an Embroidery Guild among her friends at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Salado. It took a year, but I was able to go to Texas in June of 2023, to participate in the Diocese of Texas annual conference and to spend three days with the ladies of St. Joseph’s.
In the days we had together, the ladies learned to assemble an embroidery frame and start the first motif in the Guild’s instructional book. We continue to meet monthly for a couple of hours over Zoom. I send them supplies as needed. It is great to pass on the knowledge I have been taught about Ecclesiastical Embroidery. It’s a dying art and I’m glad there are wonderful women in Texas who can make the time to learn, even if we live 1700 miles apart.