Did you ever propose a great idea to a committee? By the time all of the “You know, you could . . .” comments have died down, you’re left with an idea not at all like the one you started with. These folks don’t really mean to ruin your design, they just get caught up in the excitement and want to be a part of a good thing. Well, here’s a banner design that simply can’t be over-designed. You can honestly tell the committee that even you don’t know what the final thing will look like!
We created this banner for our celebration of World Communtion Sunday. Its beauty comes from the artful combination of many diverse elements.
Letting Go
For the raw materials, we asked a number of people in the congregation to sew together strips of any kind of fabric they might have on hand. We specified the width (2.5") and lengths (50" and 120") of the strips and encouraged them to not use any one fabric for more than 9" of the strip. But we were careful not to specify the colors or patterns or finishes of the fabrics, except for the navy, grey, and black strips that define the cross.
Every Piece a Story
As the strips came in, every person had a story to tell about the fabric they used. I’ll admit that, although the stories were interesting, in the back of my mind I was wondering how we were going to make something presentable out of such variety.
Weaving Woes
Weaving the strips turned out to be the toughest part. You’d think that this amount of fabric woven together would hold together by itself. Not so. In fact, at one particularly trying point in the process, we lifted the banner up, only to have all of the strips fall in a pile at our feet. For stability and longevity, we put a small square of fusible interfacing where one strip overlapped another.
Giving up control will be hard for some of you—not to mention the committee you report to—but in my opinion it’s the best part of this banner.
Download
Download the instructions sheet we sent to our volunteers plus the bulletin cover.