It's Been Awhile!

“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.” 
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

     In order to do all I want to do, I am going to have to live to be at least 132!  But my time the past few weeks has been taken up by a creation done in love.  My church, Westside UU, has a new minister, the Reverend Shari Woodbury and last Sunday, we had her Installation Ceremony.  It was a wonderful service; I think the whole congregation was there as well as many ministers from other UU churches in the area and friends/ministers of Shari's from other cities.
      We, the congregation, spent many hours getting the grounds and building more presentable.  You know how it is when you are having company or something special going on?  It is an opportunity to spruce up all those little things that you meant to do earlier but just hadn't gotten around2it! My small part in the whole affair was to design and make a wall hanging for the occasion. So here is my process:
     As I have probably said before, I design in my head first, then to my design wall.  I rarely sketch out my plan; I just pull fabric and jump  in.  For this project, I wanted to incorporate music, because I knew Shari is very fond of music as well are most of the congregation...to the point that a "Special Choir" had been formed with at least thirty people...much larger than our really great regular choir...with a special director and all!
      First thing I did was create paper pieced letters of one of my very favorite songs "Come Sing A Song with Me". (Paper piecing is a quilting technique that I am not going to take time to explain now but if you are really interested, you can go to this youtube link to hear all about it!) Then I decided to print off on fabric lyrics of many of our favorite songs. (Again another quilting technique with a youtube explanation) I then began placing these items on my design wall.  I knew the banner had to be pretty narrow because the wall it hangs on is curved and won't allow for anything too wide.

First design

Second Design

     With the second design, I also added some paper pieced flowers and had bordered the lyrics with fabric. (Much of the fabric I used had been give to me by Diane Nixon, a long time member of Westside.  She had all these lovely pastels for a Springtime look which was a good thing because most of my fabrics run along bold colors and batiks!)

Third Design

Fourth Design

     By this time I had added borders to the letters and started arranging it all to come up with a total look, adding other blocks, etc. I was realizing that all my blocks and letters were getting to be way too wide for what I needed so....

Fifth Design

     I moved out many of the blocks...

Sixth and final design

     I was able to get almost all the lyrics that I wanted on as well as the lettering for the song title. I also decided that  the whole thing was a little too busy as in design #5, so I put a white border between each panel and the sides, then bordered the whole banner with the same bluebonnet fabric that is around the letter.  I forgot to take a picture of it but the whole back is made up of leftover blocks I didn't have room for on the front! Which is a good thing it is on the back because one of the blocks had the date of the occasion on it and I had put the wrong month!  (When it is taken down, I will fix that error!)

    I didn't mention, that after I finished the design on #5, I actually had sewn it together but just didn't like it!!  So a lot of seam ripping going on!!  I am much happier with the final design but you can see why it took me a while to get back to blogging!!

For the Pulpit

    I also decided to make a pulpit hanging which I didn't think I would have time to do but I had so much fabric left over I started making that hanging on Friday before the ceremony the following Sunday. I had the flowers and leaves left over from another quilt I had made.  This is 22" x 33"; the banner is 20" x 60".

     And here they are together...a little different configuration...the wall the banner is on is not curved but it will hang on a curved wall later.

In the church before the Ceremony