Seamless Transition: Hobby Becomes Ministry
Seamstress creates chasuble, linens for consecration
by
Julie Murray, Interchange Assistant
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When the Rev. Canon Vicki Zust was looking for someone to make purificators and fair linens for the consecration service on April 28, she knew just who to call. Canon Zust, who has celebrated Eucharist many times at St. Mary Magdalene, Maineville, knew that parishioner Beth Fite had sewn many of the linens and altar hangings at the new church north of Cincinnati. She asked Fite if she would make the linens, and Fite was happy to oblige.
“I thought it was a good way for this church to let the new bishop know that we appreciate him and want things to go well for the diocese,” she said.
So when the bishop-elect couldn’t find a red chasuble — the sleeveless outer vestment worn by the celebrant at the Eucharist — that he liked, Canon Zust knew where to turn. Fite, a seamstress who made custom wedding and prom dresses for more than 40 years, answered immediately. “Of course I said yes, yes, yes! I am so honored.”
Fite was raised Presbyterian and later attended the United Methodist church. She made a few stoles and altar hangings for her Methodist congregation, but it wasn’t until she began attending the Episcopal Church that she tried her hand at vestments. When the Rev. Jeff Queen, founding priest of St. Mary Magdalene, showed her some of the vestments he had ordered, she told him “I could make that for you,” and a ministry was born. “Jeff showed me a lot of things and what you can do,” Fite says. “I love getting the catalogues (of vestments) and looking through them.” And she loves the pageantry of the Episcopal Church and the beautiful appointments that go along with it. “I like that cloths and colors don’t have to be exact. There are so many variations and combinations of color and texture.”
She buys many of the fabrics she uses at Textile Studios located in Montgomery. “I always find perfect things there,” she says. For the bishop’s chasuble, Fite chose a deep red silk with a gold silk lining. It’s extremely lightweight and “impossible to wrinkle,” she says. Embroidery on the front of the chasuble is in gold thread. A computerized CD-ROM of embroidery designs offers many choices for design. Fite chose an intricate cross design repeated eight times down the front of the vestment. Each cross took about 30 minutes to create. “I don’t know what the name is for this cross,” she says, “but for me, from now on, it’s the Bishop’s Cross.”
Fite sews and machine embroiders her creations in a tiny room in her home in a pre-Civil War era house on the St. Mary Magdalene property. She resides in the upper level of the house and serves as the church sexton. The main level of the house serves as the church office. While semi-retired from her seamstress business, she still does alterations and a little evangelism from her home.
“People seem to feel comfortable talking to me about church,” she says. “I tell them, ‘Come and try it. You’ll like it!’” She recently invited an alterations client to join the knitting group at St. Mary Magdalene. “Bringing people in by sewing — and knitting — is a way to get involved in a church, and not just the Episcopal Church” she says. “Sewing is a ministry to get people from the outside involved in the Church.”
Many have benefited from Fite’s ministry. St. Patrick, Lebanon, and St. Barnabas, Montgomery, have both been the recipients of handmade purificators and fair linens. She also made 10 sets and sent them to an Episcopal church in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And after a burst pipe in the sacristy at St. Mary Magdalene this winter, she’s now busy replacing many of the altar hangings that were water-damaged.
Fite says that making the chasuble was a wonderful project to work on, and she feels very blessed to be chosen. “Every step of the way was perfect,” she says. “It’s hard to explain; it was so smooth and calming.”
Fite says that usually when she’s sewing, it’s easy to mess up a seam and have to tear it out and start over. That didn’t happen once with this project. “Not one thing ever went wrong the whole time,” she says. “Mitering the corners, everything, was perfect. That’s very odd.”
When she was finished, it was such a wonderful feeling, Fite says, that there must be a purpose to why everything went so well. “Maybe everything will be that way with him,” she says, referring to Bishop-elect Breidenthal and his episcopate. “I’m very excited; it’s quite an honor. I’m really looking forward to the consecration!”
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