Premium Altar Linen Set

Premium Altar Linen Set

Corporal 18" x 18"
Purificator 18" x 11.5"
Lavabo Towel 20" x 9.5"
100% Premium Belgian Linen, Mitered Corners, Embroidered Red Crosses

This product is brought to you by the St. Martha’s Guild, an apostolate of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius.

Our altar linen sets start with the very best premium linen, sourced from Belgium, where the climate produces beautiful, long-fiber flax. The linen is a pristine, bright, optic white, with 116 threads per inch in a 4.6 oz weight—stable and strong, yet beautifully smooth and supple. The linens are cut on grain so they are straight, and square, allowing for precise, crisp, folding and pleating, and lending visual order and dignity to the liturgy. The corners are elegantly mitered, and a tasteful hemstitch edging elevates these linens even further. These sets are truly luxurious, as befitting the Mass which should receive the best that we can offer.

One of the main goals of the St. Martha’s Guild is to launch sewing guilds and teach them to make linens for their home parishes. Our great preference is for these linens to be hand stitched with prayer and devotion. That being said, we decided to offer these machine stitched linen sets at the request of several priests who have become increasingly frustrated by the plethora of inferior altar linens. Manufacturing is often farmed out to foreign factories that don't always follow ethical labor practices. Polyester and blends are common, but unsuitable for use on the altar. A prevalent lack of precision results in sloppy linens.

All of our linens are stitched in our Chicago atelier at St. John Cantius church by guild members who deeply love sewing for the Mass and who apply their considerable skill to the task of producing a refined product. We have worked to make these as economical as possible, while still including many of the beautiful and dignified traditional details that we incorporate in our hand stitched linens, and which we were unwilling to concede for the sake of expediency.

For those of you who can be enticed into liturgical stitching, visit our website for tutorials and lots of eye candy. stmarthasguild.com