News

Making liturgical vestments is like 'praying with hands'

By Tony Staley
Compass Correspondent

KIMBERLY -- Talking to Carolyn Keliher means never looking at liturgical vestments - particularly their color - the same again.

Keliher, who owns Woolin' Inn Studio in Kimberly, makes vestments worn by priests and deacons in 17 states, Canada and Australia.

She started her home-based business in 1989 after being asked to alter some albs for the priests in her parish, Holy Cross in Kimberly, now Holy Spirit in Kimberly/Darboy. By year's end she was making chasubles and stoles. She no longer makes albs.

Keliher said she was reluctant at first to make stoles and chasubles because she had grown up thinking it was something sacred that only men or women religious could do.

Now, religious communities ask her to make their vestments and funeral palls. She also has done vestments for Episcopalians, Presbyterians and even a Baptist minister in Key West, Fla.

"My way of praying"

"Making vestments is my way of praying. I always say I pray with my hands, not so much with my mouth or my head," Keliher said. "I pray with the work of my hands. The work is for the glory of God."

Eighteen years after she started, Keliher is still working in her 100-year-old house in a room about the size of a walk-in closet that also serves as a showroom.

She gets the word out with displays at the Green Bay Diocese's Leadership Convocation, conventions in Milwaukee and Chicago, and ads in "The Compass." Keliher said she doesn't put out a catalog or use a Web site because everything she makes is one of a kind.

Starting a vestment business was in some ways a natural for Keliher, who majored in home economics at UW-Stout, where she met her husband, Ken. He taught industrial arts for 30 years at Appleton East until dying eight years ago. She taught junior high home economics for a year in Kimberly, then taught fiber related classes at a vocational school. She also took liturgical environment classes through the Green Bay Diocese and in Chicago.

Importance of liturgical colors

Keliher has strong ideas about the importance of liturgical environment, vestments and color in worship. For example, people will know it's Pentecost if they step into a church blazing in red, she said.

It bothers her when parishes use the same purple for Advent and Lent. "Purple is not purple," Keliher said. "Lent should be redder, more somber, more dull, maybe a little bit irritating type of purple, a prickly kind of thing, where Advent would be more solemn, more formal, more night. It's a different kind of focus on the prayer, totally. Purple could bring that about."

For Ordinary Time, Keliher wants three or four different shades of green to match the natural seasons. For example, during the short period of Ordinary Time between Epiphany and Lent, she prefers "a wintergreen - darker, bluer, more somber - unlike the green grass for spring." For fall, she favors a darker green.

She recommends two reds - brighter for Pentecost, darker for martyrs. The same white works for Christmas, Easter, baptisms and weddings, she said.

It's not that she's trying to sell more vestments, Keliher insisted, it's that color affects people, especially those who are visually oriented, and taking that into account would improve worship for them.

When Keliher first started, she charged three times the cost of the material for vestments. But the first show she went to people told her, "'No one wants to buy cheap stuff like that. You need to raise your prices by $200-$300 a piece.' I said, 'How can that be fair?' It's the truth. People look at something and if it has a larger price tag on it, they expect they're getting something more than if that item were less. But I don't raise prices just to be raising prices."

Requests for unique vestments

Because she makes all vestments to order, Keliher works with customers on an individual basis. She said more and more parishes want vestments that are unique to them or their area.

For example, they want the color of the vestment and its overall style to match the worship space, Keliher said. Often they want the chasuble to be larger, longer in length, but ending higher above the wrists.

Keliher's ability to work custom-made vestments for priests and parishes is a strong point, said Diann Wimmer, who for many years was the director of Worship for the Green Bay Diocese.

"It is very helpful that she can tailor it to the right size and shape. She has collected all kinds of materials, older and foreign, decorative that she can use, so you can go in and pick and choose different kinds of decor," Wimmer said.

Her location makes it easy for parishes in the diocese to go to her shop, Wimmer said. "She can design for the season of year. She knows and values the liturgy guidelines and is in touch with the needs of the liturgical year. She takes into account the architecture of church so it will be in harmony. For example, a modern church needs a modern pattern and an older church needs a medieval or gothic type."

Liturgical fabric for Advent

St. Mary Parish in Appleton is one that used Keliher's expertise in having her make a blue-purple Advent chasuble, stole, banners and gift table cover, said Nancy Woods, parish liturgist.

"It looks very nice and it works very well," Woods said. "She was very good about being frugal with the fabric. We used almost every piece of it. It was nice to have someone local to work with us to meet our needs and what we wanted."

Generally when a priest comes in to buy a chasuble, she has him try on one from her stock, which gives her an idea of size without measuring. Among the first decisions after that are color and fabric.

Locating the fabric is the hardest part and it can take months if she doesn't have it in stock, said Keliher, who deals with 38 sources in the United States and Canada.

One problem is finding fabric 64 inches wide, rather than the standard 58 inches. Then, there's color and the material's texture, and how it falls and drapes. She's particularly fond of a light weight wool blend that she said breathes, doesn't wrinkle and is not too warm. She also uses silks, cotton blends, linen and even polyester, although it makes her lose her voice.

Some parishes bring her their own fabric. One bought material in London at $300 a yard for Advent vestments. It was particularly expensive because at 48 inches wide it took additional yardage.

In choosing designs or patterns for stoles and chasubles, Keliher has some advice: "Stay away from something just plastered on the chest or a something at the bottom of the stole."

No liturgical symbols allowed

She does not put liturgical symbols, such as the letters "IHS" or hosts, on chasubles or stoles because the vestments already are a symbol and do not need another symbol, she said. She refers those making such requests to liturgical vestment catalogs.

In recent years, she said, stoles have become more understated because they are hidden under chasubles. Consequently, chasubles have more ornamentation and detail because they are now prominent.

Over the last four years Keliher has had more requests for deacon's stoles and dalmatics (the wide-sleeved overgarment with slit sides). While dalmatics take longer to make than a chasuble, people expect - and do - to pay less because it's smaller, Keliher said.

A deacon's stole also requires extra work so that it doesn't slide off the shoulder or hang wrong at the side, she said.

Keliher also has restored wool and silk embroidered vestments, including the ones Native Americans gave to Green Bay's first bishop, Joseph Melcher, which are in the diocesan museum.

As for the future, Keliher said she's booked for months in advance. Longer term, she said, her 7½-year-old granddaughter, Kendra, has shown an interest in learning the trade.