Love your local church – Enriching Sacred Spaces with a Needle and Thread

Scotland’s Churches Trust

6 Dec 2024

During a recent conversation between Christine Milligan, the founding director of Scotland’s Churches Scheme (one of our two parent charities), and our current director, DJ Johnston-Smith, Christine mentioned a series of hand-sewn pulpit falls that she had created for two of her local churches. 
 
She has very kindly recently sent over to DJ a few photographs of these beautiful labours of love created for Southwick and Colvend Churches. We thought we would share these wonderful works of art in our latest “Love your local church” blog.

 

It all began in 2016, when Christine designed and made a pulpit fall as a gift to the church, in memory of former elder Donald M. Milligan, for use at Christmas, Easter and during the Sacraments. She used gold appliqué work to decorate a white silk ground in this initial piece.

Some years later, the Rev. John Murdoch, newly inducted into the charge of Colvend and Southwick, asked the Kirk Session to commission new pulpit falls to mark the seasons of the year in each church. Christine was then invited to design and make these new pieces, she purchased the coloured silk dupion from James Hare & Son, and various gold work materials, and completed the series in 2023.

Here are the fruits of those labours, with descriptions from Christine herself:

PURPLE – Southwick Church – Advent and Lent

The gold and white silk Celtic cross echoes those seen in the stained glass windows of the church. The silver elements represent both the Christmas star and the nails of the Cross.

PURPLE – Colvend Church

The white silk cross is embroidered with purple thread in a trellis design, stitched with white seed pearls which represent the luminescence of advent candlelight. The gold circle of light is embroidered with jagged lines of thread representing the Crown of Thorns.

GREEN – Southwick and Colvend Churches – Trinity

The design uses one idea in two different colourways. The gold cross at Southwick is laid over three  interlocking circles of ochre and yellow silk while the silver cross at Colvend sits atop three circles of aqua and lilac. These circles represent the Trinity and silver and gold rays radiate from the centre.

WHITE – Southwick Church 

Echoing the Arts and Crafts interior of the church, this white silk Cross is embroidered as a Celtic cross with jewel coloured threads catching up the trellis design. The cross is outlined in gold wire and thickly padded to stand out from its background.

RED – Colvend Church – Pentecost

A red silk background bears colours of gold representing the fire of Pentecost. Flames send spits and sparks upwards, created with gold sequins.

We think everyone will agree that these beautiful pulpit falls are absolutely marvellous and a testament to Christine’s artistry and skill. We hope that they will adorn Southwick and Colvend for many, many years to come.

Would you like to share with us some examples of artistic objects that have been contributed to your church by individuals or groups? Whether these are beautiful embroidered pulpit falls like Christine’s or pew cushions, table cloths, paintings, models or anything else we would certainly love to publish your pictures in a future blog.

Our thanks to Christine Milligan and the Minister and Kirk Session of Colvend and Southwick Churches for permission to use these images.