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| Lace Remnant |
Small holes and yellowing, this remnant of antique lace, found at this year's Broward Quilt Expo inspired this fabric and lace book. The lace reminded me of the vestments worn by priests and in honor of the Catholic Church's first priest, I created this small fabric book.
The book consists of nine images on eight pages. The cover, the image of the Last Supper was satin stitched over the lace and red Radiance (cotton and silk blend fabric). All of the images are satin stitched on red Radiance. I hand stitched gold thread in the arms of the cross and tied the
blood drop with red thread.
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| Close up of blood drop and Lace |
The following six pages depict seven of the stations along the Via Dolorosa.
Blue lace trim, the color associated with the Mother of Jesus was used on this page as well as burlap to represent the prison Jesus was held in overnight. The words of Simeon "...a sword shall pierce through your own soul" is printed on organza, stitched on and the edges were burned both to age it a bit and to prevent it from fraying. The strong and courageous women in Jesus' life are presented here. It was not my intention to do so but in retrospect I think it's perfect.
Tea dyed lace trim edge the image of Veronica, who full of compassion and courage wiped the face of Jesus with her veil. Her reward was the imprint of his face on the cloth. I printed the words "His face shone like the sun..." on organza and stitched to the side.
A black metal ornate cross with a red crystal in the center, symbolizing his blood adorns the page of the Crucified Christ. The pocket on the last page is behind the circular image of the dead Christ and could be used to hold a Rosary or prayer cards.
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| Back of Book, Christ's Resurrection |
I worked on this book during Holy Week. It was not planned, it just so happened that I started to work on it at the beginning of the
High Holy Days and found it to be a wonderful form of meditation.
Enjoy.
It took some time to stitch all the seams open but I believe in doing things by hand. Stitching is a quiet, careful, thoughtful process. I understand that not everyone will choose to do this but in a world that is noisy, and moving so fast, it's nice to slow down a bit. I used a herringbone stitch and it works quite well. The seams are all flat. The blocks are made of different types of fabric, dupioni silk, cotton, Radiance, which is a combination of both silk and cotton, brocades and are heavily embroidered. The combination of embroidery and the different weight of the fabrics have distorted the blocks. I think that to avoid this problem in the future, I will make the blocks larger. If I need a 6" finished block then I'm thinking starting off with an 8" block. I hope that will give me enough of an excess to trim the block to size without compromising the stitches or the embellishments. 
