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Well, he did it again; my son, I mean, the one who wants
to be a priest.
For his birthday on September 25, Justin wanted only one
thing - a quilt to give to some friends of his that are starting a church near
Las Vegas, South Hills Community Church in Henderson, NV. He spent a weekend
with these people and was distressed by the fact that they had no art at all on
their walls. This church had taken, as its mission statement, a reading from
Revelations, where John has a vision of Christ in white robes and white hair,
with fire coming from His eyes, a two-edged sword coming from His mouth, seven
silver stars in His right hand and seven golden lamp stands around His feet.
And, oh yes, His feet were glowing like bronze. The stars and lamp stands were,
apparently, a metaphor for the creation of seven churches way back at the beginning
of it all. (What the glowing feet have to do with anything is way beyond me, but
Justin seemed to think they were important.) Justin thought this would make a great
wallhanging for his friends' empty church office walls.
Yeah, right.
When I asked him if he had a picture I could work from,
his reply was that no, he didn't, but his friend had a tattoo of it. Great.
And when did Justin want this to be done? By his birthday. Of course.
Now, this is really not as far out of the ballpark for me
as one might think, because I have made liturgical quilts before; large liturgical
quilts based on scripture passages about Pentecost, Easter, and Advent, so this
would be a piece of cake, right?
The first problem was the background. There was no time to
piece anything, but it just so happened there was a wonderful piece of Mickey
Lawler's Skydyes fabric in my stash, a piece bought about two years ago because
it was absolutely essential for a "special" project. You know the one, the "special
project" we're all are going to make someday. Of course, one never really wants to
use Skydyes fabric up, but there comes a time when one simply has to grin and bear it.
Having no time to lose, it was time to hunt around for a
picture of Jesus. Oddly enough, there didn't seem to be a great glut of pictures
like the one the reading described, so I finally decided that a picture of Jesus
stretching out his hand to help Peter was going to be as close as one could get
to having Jesus in the right pose. I enlarged this figure to a traceable size
using acetate tracing paper, then drew a 1" grid on my tracing paper and a larger
grid on some big sheets of tracing paper, and transferred the drawing block by
block to the larger paper, then put the original drawing for the face and hands
on the scanner and enlarged them to the finished size.
I taped the drawing to the window, then taped the fabric
over that, and traced the Jesus figure onto the background lightly with a pencil,
so I'd know where to appliqué the figure.
Then came the hard part. It really wasn't easy to make a
face with fire coming out of His eyes and a sword out of His mouth, and make it
something that a person would really want to look at. It took a couple of tries
to get the face to come out right, but when a drawing finally looked right, I
traced that with permanent Pigma markers onto fine-grained white broadcloth. Then
it was time to get out the pastel chalks and shade the face, arms, hands, and feet.
After that, it was just a question of getting out the Setacolor fabric paints and
painting a white beard, moustache, and hair. It looked rather strange, having
Jesus with white hair and beard, but who can argue with John?
Once these pieces were shaded, I took the large tracing
paper copy and glued it to cardboard with a gluestick, then cut the pieces of
cardboard out and used them as templates to turn the edges of the pieces under.
Once that was done, the pieces could be pinned to the background fabric, where
the pencil outline lay waiting.
Having decided it would be really gross to have a sword
actually coming out of His mouth, even though that's what Justin wanted, we settled
for having it behind His head just looking like it was coming out of His mouth.
Of course, there had to be a glowing aura around His head, but that was easily
solved with a piece of opalescent organdy cut to approximately the right size,
its edges melted in the flame of a candle, put behind Jesus' head.
Okay, ready for clothes. The clothes had to be white,
like judge's robes. White silk charmeuse for the shawl, and china silk for the
robes seemed sufficiently opulent fabrics for a Judge; besides, there was lots
of it leftover from silk painting projects. Rather than cut out patterns for
these clothes, it was more fun to just pin the fabric to the background and begin
draping it, building in folds and depth, then appliqué the fabric for the clothes
with a tiny zigzag stitch and invisible thread. This worked out fairly well, but
the robes didn't have enough depth, even with the folds built in, so out came the
paints again. It was necessary to mix up a very diluted purple/black/blue wash, and
stroke it into all of the folds of the garment, to make the folds acceptably noticeable.
The trim was easy. It was fused and satin-stitched goldy-white
fabric; at least, it was easy until the fabric started to shred, after it was
already stitched and fused on, of course. It was finally necessary to satin stitch
some nylon net over the trim so it would stop shredding.
The next problem was the stars. How big should they be,
and what size? They couldn't be too big and still be in His right hand, so after
a couple of false starts and some more input from Justin, we finally settled on
more melted edged opalescent organdie, heavily machine embroidered with hologram
thread, with a Swarovski crystal sewn into the center of each one.
The glowing feet weren't much of problem, since the glow
could just be machine embroidered with metallic thread. The real problem was the
lamp stands. What the heck does a golden lamp stand look like, anyway? After
checking several sources, which were absolutely useless, I finally just made up a
shape, made it in several sizes, and then played with those shapes until a
logical pattern emerged. Then the patterns were traced onto Steam a Seam II,
which was then ironed to the back of a gold lame fabric. The release paper was
torn off, the lamp stands were scattered around His feet, fused, then satin stitch
appliquéd in place.
They probably aren't accurate lamp stands, but if you ever
find out what they should really look like, don't tell anybody they're wrong, okay?
It’s way too late, now. They're FUSED.
Justin said that Jesus' words were also very important,
so they were printed them out on the computer and traced onto freezer paper.
The letters were carefully cut out and thrown away, and then the remaining
freezer paper was ironed to some purple border fabric. The letters were then
stenciled in with Lumière and Setacolor luminescent and pearlescent paints.
It had to be done three times, so the letters would show on the purple.
After that, it was an easy matter to make a wooden cross
on some purple grape background fabric for the back, layer it all together, and
quilt it with metallic and hologram thread.
All in all, the quilt only took nine days to make, the
church people seemed very happy to get the quilt when we took it to them, and
Justin was happy.
But then he did it again. In early December he sent me
an e-mail saying that his friends in England wanted to know why he doesn't have
any quilts at school, since his Mom is such a "hotshot quilter". I suggested
it was because he didn't take any with him, and asked him if he wanted me to
bring him his quilt when we went to visit him in England at Christmas.
He replied that what he really wanted was a wallhanging
of Jesus washing the disciples' feet; maybe four or five of them, with a towel
around Jesus' waist, and expressions of concern and consternation on the
disciples' faces.
Yeah. Right. No problem. By Christmas. Of course,
along with the seventy million other things I have to do. Sure.
That one really turned out to be fairly easy, since he
only wanted a small wallhanging. about 18" x 24", which I call "Go and Do Likewise."
It even fit nicely in my little carry-on suitcase when we went to see him.
What really scares me is the question of what he's going
to come up with next.
Linda Schmidt
E-mail shortattn@attbi.com
Web Site http://shortattn.home.attbi.com
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