Blessing Wall, Lent

When I began planning for music and art during Lent, the word "blessing" seemed to crop up several times in the appointed lections. I discussed with my worship planning colleagues if "blessing" in the sense of being blessed by God and being a blessing to others might serve as a thematic focus for the upcoming season. After some good conversation in relation to the Bible readings and in relation to how we have observed the season in the past, we agreed that this could be a nice theme for us to explore.

My mind coupled this thematic focus with an image I had seen from a youth event some of our kids attended last year or the year before of a prayer wall. Kids wrote prayers and intentions on small pieces of paper and adhered them to a make-shift wall. I spent some time wondering how to put the two, "blessing" and the wall, into one undertaking for our congregation.

Ultimately I thought a series of fabric-covered panels, each with a letter from the word "bless" could be used as a temporary wall in our narthex. Folks will be invited throughout the season of Lent to write how they have been blessed and/or how they have been (or how they can be or intend to be) a blessing for others. We'll use special pens to write on scraps of fabric and then glue those small swatches to the wall.  My hope is that the finished project will look somewhat like a mosaic of fabric-on-fabric, nicely filled in. Herewith how the project has developed:

These are a set of wood frames that we use for a variety of undertakings, most often to create backdrops for dramatic productions:

I decided to put a base layer of black fabric (flat sheet) on the panels first. I simply stapled them in place:

I purchased an array of five hues of purple (cotton twill), appropriate for the season to serve as the top layer on each panel: 

I used white felt to cut the letters of the word "bless." Each letter uses a different font; we used the photocopier to enlarge each letter to a suitable size. I purchased a new rotary cutting tool for this project, which worked really well, and used a permanent fabric glue to adhere the letters:

Here is the set of five panels, mostly complete, after I finished adhering the letters to each. The height and centering of each letter varies purposefully:

Coming soon: the panels in place in the narthex and how they evolve as folks add their "blessings" to the project. To date I have done most of the work, but we have artists on board to select the fabrics we'll use for the attachments and to actually help folks on Sunday mornings to create their individual swatches Our print publicity for the upcoming season uses this same five-panel concept to make a nifty tie-in.