Well this time, I was thankful for an excuse to play with Color Hue dyes that I learned about at a weavers' conference last summer, July 2014.
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| ©Judy Connor Jones |
It was a wonderful workshop and the dyes were so easy to use and the teacher was excellent. As it turned out, they were the perfect dyes for this project. You see they bond instantly to silk and because they do, they require no mordants (dyers nerdy talk) and very little washing of excess dye in the cloth. There is very little dye left that has not bonded to the cloth. So why is this important? Remember my dilemma, how to incorporate prayers in the shawl? One of the other items in my tool box is knowing how to ink jet print onto fabric. While the ink jet print is permanent, washing over and over again to remove dyes would cause the ink to fade. The Color Hue dyes would allow me to give color to the silk, which was white at the beginning, without the print fading. I would print prayers or statements of faith for each of the Abrahamic faiths onto silk, dye it, and cut it into ribbon using a Japanese technique for making long strips of ribbon, another tool box item!
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| ©Judy Connor Jones |
Issue resolved! BUTTTTTTT (UT OH, here goes another Judy brain storm!) - wouldn't it be cool if the prayers or statements were written in English, Hebrew, and Arabic! YES!
Reality check - how to do that? I don't know Hebrew and I don't know Arabic. Just so happens that my husband works at a seminary (Andover Newton Theological School) where, you guessed it, there is an Interfaith Professor, a Hebrew Professor, and BINGO, an Islamic Professor! I am most grateful to the help they provided by doing the translations I needed and their perseverance to get it into a format that I could use. Thank you Jenny, Greg and Celene.
So what was printed and woven into the piece? For Christianity, in English, I printed the first line of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name", for Judaism in Hebrew, part of the Shema, "Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.", and for Islam in Arabic, "There is no god but God". Under each of these ribbons was another ribbon with the same phase for each, "Peace, Salaam, Shalom". At the end of each silk ribbon row was an olive wood bead from my "stash of stuff" which I acquired from my mother-in-law's "stash of stuff". Perfect! They were waiting for this moment!
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| ©Judy Connor Jones |
When the piece was completed and I took it off the loom, I was so moved by the colors and the incorporating of the prayers that it became a Holy moment. My hands had created something I never dreamed I would do. So many serendipitous things happened in the making of this piece that it is hard to believe that my hand was the only hand creating it. The Great Creator's Hand was definitely present.
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| ©Ritterbin.com |
The piece was shipped off and presented to the General Secretary of American Baptist Churches, USA at their Mission Summit, June, 2015. The Program presentation was called "Draping of the Mantle", a reference to an ancient tradition. PERFECT! I was honored to be a part of it.
So what's next? I don't know. I do know that something new and creative is around the corner. The idea of working with the Interfaith concept is gnawing at me. I can't ignore it!
I leave you with a collage of pictures including the draping of the mantle and a blessing that you may be wrapped with the mantle of inspiration and creativity.
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