Saga of the Baptismal Robes

Back in ...oh, I dunno, 2002?...the church decided to start using baptismal robes. We modified a pattern for an African Caftan, ordered three large bolts of blue polyester crepe fabric, had a marathon cutting day and cut out about 20, stored the rest of the fabric, farmed them out amongst various sewing ladies and were set...for a while.

In November of 2004, a number of robes suddenly disappeared. Ivestigation showed that they disappeared after the October baptism service and the conjecture is that they were, um, thrown away. Seems the lady who usually oversees the robes was out of town, so she told the deacons who were assisting with the service to put the robes in a large garbage bag, and another lady would pick them up to wash them. Well, when our laundry volunteer went looking for the robes she couldn't find them and assumed someone else had taken them. Our deacons verified that they had put the wet robes in the plastic bag as instructed and last saw them outside the restroom door.

Now, if you were a janitorial type person, and you found a large, heavy trash bag tied up outside the bathroom, would YOU open it up to see what was in it? Apparently our janitors didn't, either.

We have since specified that the used robes should be left hanging in the bathrooms on their hangers.

Anyway, we pulled down the remnaning partial bolts of the fabric and cut out and made about 20 more robes.

Because of the Scrooge production, we didn't have our monthly baptism service in December, so January's service was quite large. Two days later I got a call...we need more baptismal robes, especially in the very large size. I knew we had a couple of chunks of the fabric left; I estimated enough for seven robes. After measuring it, I dropped my estimate to five.

When we cut them out last week, we discovered that the fabric was damaged along one selvage. Apparently, someone 'borrowed' the fabric and stapled it to something, then pulled it down. So we couldn't cut quite as efficiently as we otherwise might've.

We got three XL robes and one XXL that we just kind of cheated to make by moving the main garment pieces away from the cf/b after cutting the neckline.

So, Miss M and I are going to haul our machines and such to church this morning for another sewing fest...four baptismal robes. The last four, unless they get some more fabric. It'd probably be easier to sew them at home than to haul all the stuff down there, but this way they'll pretty much all get done in a day. Otherwise I'd be looking at them until the week before the next baptismal service.

But needing more robes, in this case, is a good thing... ;)