For the 2 weeks preceding Easter this year, I have been creating a gift for my church, First Baptist of Champaign at Savoy. I hosted a seminar that was attended from all over east central Illinois in February on Church Banners....so, it was time to devote my skills and talents to creating some for my own church. Here are pictures of these gifts of my mind and fingers... and a bit about technique, products used, etc.
Our pastor does first person dramatizations and this Palm Sunday, he was the Thief who was forgiven by Christ as he hung beside him. What a powerful message! So....I thought I would re-create the hill and the 3 crosses.
First, I found a great greeny, blue batik that looked like the sad sky of Good Friday. I stipple quilted that to a polyester backing all over in the area that I determined to be the sky.
Then, with string and Chalkoner in hand, and having rummaged through my color-organized stash for appropriate fabrics to create the landscape, I "drew" with string the silhouettes of the hills. When happy with the look, I sketched them in with my great white Chalkoner. .
Then, at my kitchen counter, with my big pressing padded surface below and my Rowenta steam generator iron, I selected fabric for a hill, (starting from the very backmost hill) scrunched it up and pressed it - pressing in all kinds of wrinkles until I liked how it looked. I also added ravels of our Euro Linen for grass scattered here and there...Then, lots of glass head pins to hold everything in place and not melt as I pressed over it all. Over to the machine I went…with YLI Lingerie & Thread in the bobbin, big darning foot on top, and quilting needle threaded with suitable clear or smoke YLI Invisible thread - and I stitched and stitched and stitched - free motion, feed dogs down..... you get the idea. I absolutely love my old, trusty Pfaff 1472 for all this free motion work - it chugs right through all those layers and just performed in ways I could hardly have dreamt it could!
Next came the crosses - and I padded them with more batting, checking my picture of inspiration (that was hanging from the kitchen fixture over the table) for the proper angles for perspective, etc. The crosses are actually black satin with lots of vertical stitching in them.
I must tell you, I had the crosses on and then realized that the smaller ones did not show up much, as I had them
against the background dark sky - so off they came, and in went some light colored hills for them to silhouette against.....I'd never have been happy with it if I hadn't taken the time to add them!
Creating Christ was a very significant experience for me. I actually used a wool jersey skirt that my husband had mistakenly run through the washer and drier - yes, well felted. So - I cut it up like a man, wound thread around, stuffed a head, added some hair - and stitched my Lord to the cross. Interesting - the symbolism to me of creating Christ from a bad piece of cloth - I felt more like I was fashioning and nailing my own dirty laundry up there - but fully realized for the first time that Christ gave his very being - his body, his life for all my screw ups.....
Next, came the creation of the thieves - I took scraps of transparent black silk organza and knotted them up in much the same manner. Again - symbolism: I could see right through the fabric of their "being", very unlike the solid, tight, non-raveling felted wool jersey I had used to create Jesus Christ.
With the "painting" with fabric accomplished (with lots of help from my 3 cats who thought this was all a quite wonderful adventure), I dug into boxes of wonderful upholstery scraps that had been donated to me by a customer. I selected a piece, threw it into the washer and dryer and then used it to securely back the entire piece. The body that upholstery gives for banner backing is absolutely perfect!!! I added channels at the top for stabilizing dowels and at the bottom for the weight of a metal rod.
Another piece of upholstery, this time a burnt orange, was cut into binding strips and added just like a quilt binding.
Rings were added along the backside from which to hang it - but I can see that I have to change those a bit as they showed when the piece was hung at church.
Inspired by the cover to Max Lucado's book, He Chose The Nails, as suggested by my son, Jeff, I set out to re-create this look of a cross of nails and thorns. I actually purchased big old nails at the hardware store - and begged a church farmer friend for barbed wire to do it exactly as on the book cover, but that didn't turn out to be quite the look I was really looking for - anyway, I work better with fabric than wire and nails.....
So, back into the upholstery boxes where I found a grey coarsely woven fabric from which I cut 9" long x 3" wide pieces with a point at one end. I folded the long edges into the center and stitched a straight line. Then I inserted a wire so that I could later bend and twist it, and then pulled up both folded edges to the center back and hand stitched to create a "round" nail. Adding a folded square of fabric on top by hand created the head to the nail. I think I made about 11 nails.
God worked it out that I ran into a friend while shopping. I was telling her about my work and wishing I could find real thorns for the "crown" and she said there was a hawthorn tree in her back yard!! So - a trip to snip from that tree provided all I needed for fashioning the thorns. I wired the thorns together into a crown and stitched them down, once I had decided upon final placement and snipped off the backmost thorns so that it would lie flat against the background.
For the background, I selected from our sale fabrics this off-white wool crepe gauze, layered it on quilt batting and stipple quilted all over it.
My son selected the font from the computer, sized it and flipped it horizontally so that I could just trace the letters onto Steam a Seam 2 without having to flip them myself - truly cool! (Have you tried Steam A Seam 2 yet? It is this great stuff like Stitch Witchery - BUT, it has paper on both sides, and is tacky enough to adhere temporarily with just a touch - then when you have it exactly where you want it, you fuse with the iron!! Truly a cool new notion!!!) I had envisioned the cross in the center of the hanging all along, but Jeff convinced me to set the cross off to the left and right justify the lettering. He has a real eye - I highly suggest not trying to make all the decisions of banners by yourself! Solicit the help and talents of others in your family, and in your church!
A textured, striped rayon that I padded and added to the sides and for top tabs created the side and lowermost binding. The bottom shape of the banner was also decided by laying string down until I was pleased. I think the shape conveys part of the severity of the sacrifice of Christ as well.
No stain in hand, I used shoe polish and a rag to stain the rod - a 1" dowel - and the finials. All purchased at Lowe's hardware store. I plan to use the same finials on other rods, decreasing the expense, as they just screw in.
This is art taken from Banners for Worship book by Carol Jean Harris. I went to the church and had it copied onto graph paper to begin with. Then, I taped together large pieces of our pattern paper - available in rolls,
- absolutely indispensable to have around for pattern alteration, etc.! With the grid on the pattern, I could enlarge it by having 4 squares on my tabletop cutting mat (40" x 72" ) equal 1 square on the pattern. I sketched it in, - quite a brain exercise. I then cut that pattern up and used it to cut the colors of fabric for the cross, etc. As I cut the (quilt, cotton, textured) fabric, I laid Fine
Fuse (without paper) - 17" wide, right on the top of the fabric and cut it at the same time with the rotary cutter.
I then laid down all the pieces, padding the sun behind the cross with fusible fleece (love that stuff!) , slipping the Fine Fuse below and fusing them down - again with my great, trusty Rowenta Steam Generator Iron.
Then... Clover Quik Fusible Bias in metallic gold was applied over all the joinings and borders of the fabrics. Wanting this banner to last a good many years, I elected to also take a couple of extra hours to stitch down both sides of this fusible bias with clear thread. I also added oodles of free motion stitching with YLI monofilament clear and smoke thread to the piece, stitching through the base fabric and the polyester, dense quilt batting on the back of the wool.
Again, I went to the upholstery fabrics to select a backing. Down to the wire on time, (the Saturday morning before Easter), I elected to stitch the double folded bias I had made of the purple to the wrong side, pulling it around to the right side and machine stitching it down instead of the opposite direction and doing the hand stitching all the way around! It worked great, and no one will ever know.....
Again, the lettering was done with the help of my son - especially on the creative placement, and accomplished with Steam A Seam 2. Actually - it was fused down so quickly, that I'll have to go back and re-fuse it so that it sticks securely. He had the idea of repeating the background wool for the letters of Christ and the scripture on the purple so that it would show up - not a good idea, as it was so loosely woven that it frayed like mad at the last minute - so to my
trusty Pfaff I trotted once again to just stitch it down all over. My Gingher
Appliqué scissors came to the rescue to give this entire white lettering a good haircut - actually outside the church so as to not litter up the carpet.
Having sweet-talked my wonderful hubby into staining the rod with shoe polish as I'd done the other one, and screwing in the finials - that was fed through the tabs and up it went!
Well - that's been my last 2 weeks of sewing - and a more inspirational., meaningful time of sewing I don't think I've ever had! I highly recommend putting your talents to use in your place of worship.
Londa'
Londa's Sewing Etc.,Inc.
404 S. Duncan Road
Champaign, IL 61821
www.londas-sewing.com
217-352-2378
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