New Quilt: Nicene Creed

As long-term readers may remember, I'm working on a series of quilts inspired by illuminated manuscripts and featuring parts of the Episcopal liturgy/worship service.  Well over a year ago (in fact before I started the most recently finished piece in the series, my Lord's Prayer quilt), I started this project depicting text from the Nicene Creed.  It's obviously not the whole creed, that's way more words than I wanted to mess with.  I've done enough of these word quilts to know that there's a balance between enough words to convey the meaning or import of the prayer/text while still maintaining the artistic composition.  Anyway, one of the central dogmas of Christianity is the Triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and this concept of the trinity is one of the main things captured in the creed.  The text I decided to put in the quilt is excerpted below.  If you're interested in the whole thing, you can find it here (our whole service is in English, don't be scared by the Latin below).

CREDO in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem  (I believe in one God, the Father almighty)

Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum (And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God)


Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem (And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life)


I decided to use a bright pink silk sari for my background, and began by setting up the text in illustrator and cutting it out on my silhouette cutter.  I'd say I have a love-hate relationship with my silhouette, but it's really a hate-hate-hate-love-hate-hate-hate relationship.  It's the only way I have to cut out the really precise letters, but it never cuts cleanly (and I've tried everything).  I'm doing more and more cutting on the laser cutter these days, but discovered it way after starting this quilt.  In addition, the laser cutter is only accessible under very limited conditions, so alas.


Anyway, here are some shots aligning the text (always very challenging), and working on the initial letters.  Doing the fancy initial letters is one of my favorite parts of this series.  The background of that "C" is hand-dyed silk velvet, which of course bled onto the pink quilt while blocking at the end, but I suppose that's life (at least in my studio).  Several of the other initials are made from fabric I harvested from old silk neckties.


And then the piece sat in this state for many many months on my design wall.  I never got it down, and the large initial was just pinned on because I knew I'd need to get some border elements under it.  I kept having to carefully fold it vertically out of the way if I needed to extend some other project onto that section of the design wall.










Finally I got back to designing the borders.  Medieval illuminated manuscripts were filled with images, including flora and fauna, rich with symbolism and meaning throughout the borders.  I love looking through them  and seeing all the fantastic animals hiding there.  There are tons of different ones, both real and imaginary who often lurk in the borders doing the nuttiest things.  I have a whole pinterest board full of medieval illuminated animals, I encourage you to browse through if you're interested.  


I think my favorite might be the rat family rowing a boat,



but other favorites include a monkey playing the bagpipes, 






a half-stag-half-snail






a rabbit and a dog jousting with the dog riding another rabbit and the rabbit riding a snail-human monster?




a dog writing a manuscript




and a dog taking care of another dog tucked in bed.





Anyway,  back from the tangent.  The things that keep my heart grounded and joyful are my home and family and dogs, so I decided to populate the quilt borders with my dogs and cats (all masquerading as angels), and even Becky's rats (in honor of all our rodent friends over the years), and images of my true home in New Mexico, with mountains and flowers and trees I grew up with.  Come back on Monday to see more in progress pictures!