"Ordinary Times"

Ordinary time is not a liturgical season, at least not in the way that Easter or Advent are. The days between Pentecost and the first Sunday in Advent span about half a year. This takes us from spring to almost the beginning of winter. Lent, Easter, Advent and Christmas all have there own images and colors. The color green is the color the church uses for ordinary time, there are no particular images for this time of the year.

I have been making eight new banners for our church that are in several shades of green. I love the bright colors of green that we see in the spring. As summer moves along the greens change and eventually become a darker green. I wanted to incorporate several of the different colors in the scarves.

I used silk scarves that were purchased from Dharma. I did some "Shibori" dyeing on the scarves. Damp silk scarves were wrapped around a long pieces of PVC pipe. String was then wrapped around the silk and the silk was scrunched to one end of the pipe. I applied different shades of green Dye-na-Flow paint to the scarves and let the colors blend together. After the paint had dried the scarves were removed from the PVC and then iron to set the colors.

A close up of one of the banners.

A banner hanging in the church.

Silk Banners

I would like to share something that I do which I have not shown before. I create the paraments and banners for our church. This coming Sunday is the 6th anniversary of our church becoming a reconciling church. We are a church that honors diversity and welcomes and embraces ALL people.

This past few weeks I have made eight rainbow colored banners to hang in the church. I used 15" x 60" silk scarves that I purchased from Dharma. I like to use silk, as it is lightweight and has some movement to it. I stretched the silk on a frame that I made from PVC pipe. I used Dye-na-Flow paints to paint them. While they were still wet I sprinkled some salt on them and also used alcohol while the scarves were wet and again when they had dried.

This morning with the help of my SIL we got them hung and ready for Sunday. The pictures below show six of the eight.