Dang! Spiritual Battles in the Sewing Room

Okay, so I was sewing on the Bricks & Stepping Stones quilt, connecting the completed rows of block. And as I was pressing the seams to one side, I discovered that one of the small black squares had a hole in it. I have no idea how it got there. Itinerant moths? Most likely that tiny hole was already in my fabric strip when I cut it into squares. But the thought of having to rip that unit out of a quilt so near completion is disheartening. I just rolled it up and went off to procrastinate with my laptop.

I love quilting, but in every project I seem to reach a point where it's hard to go on. Either I've got to correct a mistake, or I've got to trudge through a boring stage of the project, or there's a "hard part" that I'll love having done, but I dread actually doing it. There's nothing for it but the virtue of perseverance, a virtue which is in short supply in my sewing room. (It's not something that you can stock up on when you've got a 50%-off coupon from Jo-Ann's.) I know I need to just pick up my seam ripper and have at it! But like St. Paul, I do neither what I want nor what I ought. Instead, I spent much of the evening just clicking around the Internet. What a waste!

I guess my spiritual muscles are as weak as my physical muscles -- and both from lack of exercise! Okay, tomorrow after Mass I will square my shoulders and march back to the sewing machine, invoking St. Michael as I pick up my seam ripper. I will think of it as a tiny little sword. Who knew that a quilter's sewing room might actually be a training ground for larger battles in the greater world?

Heavenly Sewing

Guess what I sewed today? It's an icon cover.

My sister emailed me the other day to ask if I could sew some covers for her two new icons. (This is the same sister who gave me her Bernina 1130 last year.) Of course I said yes. Not only do I love to use my Bernina, but I am very happy to share (in a tiny way) in her work.

An icon is a representation of a sacred personage (such as Christ, a saint, or an angel) or a scriptural event (such as the wedding feast at Cana) which is commonly painted on a wooden panel for prayer and liturgical use in the Eastern Orthodox church and the Eastern Rites of the Catholic church. Icons are painted in a very stylized manner which is deeply symbolic. They have often been described as windows into heaven.

When my sister finishes an icon, she likes to encase it in a sort of linen bag which protects it from fingerprints while it is being conveyed to the person or church which has commissioned it. Here's a picture of one of the icons that will be enclosed in the covers I made last night. Do click on the image for a closer look. The reason the gold glows so beautifully is that it's 24 carat. (Besides painting commissions, my sister also sells notecards based on her icons. Click here if you want to see her website.)