Triduum and Easter

This blog is about creativity and living fully. That's my excuse for today's posting. Today, I am offering some scenes from the Triduum and Easter as I lived them.

Holy Thursday:
It's the footwashing ritual, and people are standing in line all over the church (there are six footwashing stations set up). I am ferrying water from the basement for one of the stations in the back of the church. A man and his two young daughters (perhaps 3 and 4 years old) approach. The first little girl gets her foot washed, then she is guided in washing her father's foot, then her father washes the foot of the other little girl, then that little girl washes the foot of the college student who was next in line. Both little girls had incredibly serious faces on through this whole procedure, and every adult in the vicinity was wearing a goofy "awwwww" face.

We are in the lower chapel (a space that on Sundays seats 180 people for overflow liturgies). There are no chairs in the space, just a large tent-like structure in the middle of the room. The only lights are very subdued spots up near the ceiling (and aimed at the ceiling) as well as a few lit candles. The procession comes down from the upper chapel, bearing the Blessed Sacrament. When the procession crosses into the space, we all kneel and sing the "Tantum Ergo." It's an incredibly powerful time, hearing all of these voices chanting this centuries-old hymn. I want to try to capture this in a quilt - and I think I know how to proceed: triangles of purples, dark greens, and deep russet oranges punctuated by fragments of cream and buttery yellow.

Good Friday:
Somehow, in the midst of getting instructions from Hubby Dearest about where I was to go and when, I didn't actually look at the program of the service (nor did any of my three compatriots). So, there were two of us gals holding lit candles that weren't quite seated properly in their stands and two strong young men holding a cross on their shoulders through an entire section of the ritual all of us had forgotten about. Of course, I sway (all of the time - I am incapable of being still), and the candle I was holding . . .  well, it fell over onto my friend! I grabbed it back, and she didn't get burned; however, she had wax all down the front of her shirt and on her glasses (and, she told me the next morning, in her hair). One of the fellows standing nearby, after ascertaining that she was okay, ran her glasses to the basement for cleaning. I felt SO stupid and SO clumsy. Somewhere during my 50th apology on Saturday, she told me to knock it off; that she recognized an accident when it happened.

During the Veneration of the Cross, I was again struck by the power of being in a parish that draws in people from all over the country and all over the world. We see every skin tone and many styles of dress. We hear the liturgy sung and spoken in many accents and hear a wide variety of life experiences. The Venerations that people offer range from my two fingers on the cross and a bow to full prostration. When we got home that evening and heard what the goofus homilist had said at St. Peter's in Rome, I was again glad that I had had such a good experience locally.

Holy Saturday:
I had been informed that I was one of two co-coordinators. So, when we arrived at 10:30 a.m., I took the detailed order of service off by myself and started reading carefully, making notes, underlining, etc. We then proceeded to have two rehearsals (and these rehearsals followed a three-hour choir and band rehearsal). The first rehearsal was with the RCIA folks who would be receiving sacraments. Hubby Dearest was in charge, and halfway through the proceedings, I hollered, "By the way, I'm Liz. I'm married to [him], and I'll be helping out tonight." Oh, yeah, he had forgotten to make the introductions. He's so cute. The second rehearsal was with the priests, servers, and co-coordinators.

We co-coordinators had to know where every person (other than the choir, band, and readers) was supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing so that we could keep things on track. If we are obsessing about details, then the rest of the assembly can relax into the flow of the liturgy. That was why, at one point in the afternoon, I was stepping through (and reciting aloud) the places where some of the communion ministers would need to go and stand; I played all four roles so that I knew them cold. Psychologists tell us that people have different learning styles. I have a strong kinesthetic bent. I have to experience something in order to know it. Hearing it doesn't do me much good; reading about it helps a lot; but doing it implants it for me. That evening, I used all three methods with the four ministers: I told them how the procedure would work, I demonstrated it for them, and then I made them step through it. They all did the procedure flawlessly in the liturgy itself.

Easter Sunday:
I was scheduled as a communion minister at the 8:30 (after getting home at 1:30). Okay. No big deal. I've been doing this schedule for Easter all of my adult life. Then, I found Hubby Dearest in the lower chapel. There was no usher scheduled for the 10:00 in that space. So, I became the usher. The space seats 180? We had over 300 people. When things started getting crowded, I made the following announcement: "We have a lot of parents with little kids and other folks who also have difficulty standing. If you can stand for an hour, would you please give up your seat?" Two dozen people popped up and ran to the outer edges of the room. It was a beautiful moment. The very best moment was just before the liturgy started, and a young mother carrying a small child and towing a toddler came rushing in, looked at the crowded space and almost burst into tears. I greeted her and said, "We have a seat for you." The look of total relief on her face was matched by the grins of the people standing nearby. They had played a role in this young mother's morning getting better.

Oh, the Easter dress? It wore beautifully! No tugging, no awkward fit, it just covered me and floated along, garnering compliments along the way. It's a little heavy, and a little warm. I might shorten the sleeves, and I definitely have to attend to the fraying, but all in all, a very good dress.

I promise actual craft stuff in the next posting.

Easter Dress is Done!

There is a peculiar amnesia/madness that sets in with me when I contemplate sewing projects: Somehow, I know that no matter how many nutty decisions I make, no matter how many shortcuts I take, that the project will go quickly and smoothly. This is rarely true. There are reasons for the rules, and it is a foolish person who ignores them lightly.

Okay, so I didn't have the perfect fabric in my stash. Did I go and purchase four yards of something suitable? No. I decided to take off my shelf some almost-okay fabric that was a little too thin and had fraying issues. I figured if I doubled it, it would solve the thinness issue (and obviate the need for a slip as well). The result is that the dress is very heavy. This may become a problem this coming weekend. Also, the raw edges have a lot of fraying. After this weekend, I'll probably go in to the interior of the dress and do some folding under and slip stitching. Of course, I just now thought that since I had used two layers throughout, I could have pressed the edges between the layers. Did this occur to me while I was frantically trying to meet the deadline? Noooooo.

The next fudge was that I didn't have a perfect pattern in my possession. I decided to mash together the bodice from a dress and a blouse. Note to self: next time, redraw the collar area (easy) and not the shoulder seam. A good five hours this past weekend was consumed with basting in a sleeve, trying on the dress, saying, "uggh!!", ripping out the basting stitches, carefully measuring and trimming away more sleeve cap (and then repeating this sequence - at least four times). In the end, I got a sleeve cap that worked with very little fudging. Every time I trimmed the cap, I laid that trimmed piece over the other sleeve cap and trimmed that one back. Every other try, I put both sleeves on to make sure that the bodice still worked.

Another issue was the dropped waist. We all remember the late 1990s / early 2000s: Dropped waists were everywhere. I shortened the bodice and redrew the side seams inward to make the dress a little more form fitting.

A final issue was that I didn't have quite enough fabric to make the skirt as long as I would have liked it. So my solution was to add an extra three inches and cover the seam on the outside with some of the lace trim leftover from trimming the vest. In the end, it's not a great dress, but it's perfectly serviceable.

We are Catholics, and my husband is the co-ordinator of the liturgy co-ordinators in our parish. He's also an autodidact (who also has a BA in theology) well versed in theology and liturgy, which means that he is the de facto liturgist in the parish. For us, Easter starts in January when he confers with the pastor and the parish staff. He has co-ordinators in place for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil (I'm one of his Vigil co-ordinators), but he's going to be stressing about the details until it's all over. We'll be up on Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday. We'll get home long enough to get three hours of sleep and then head back in for the 8:30 a.m. Mass, where I have communion preparation duty. It's a long weekend, and this dress will get a real workout.

I hope that whatever celebration/commemoration you observe this week, that you have many blessings flow from it. I probably won't check back in here until next week.

Easter Dress

Because I don't have enough projects in the queue, this past Monday morning (as in two Mondays before Easter - 3/22/2010), I wake up knowing that I want a new dress for Easter. The last time I had this thought was about 11 years ago, and I went to seven stores looking for something pretty that would fit me and not make me look like the mother of the bride. I ended up sewing a couple of dresses for myself, and other than trousers from TravelSmith and shirts from second-hand stores, most of my clothes have come from my sewing room.

So, I had to pick a pattern (something fairly simple and quick to make). I ended up choosing Simplicity 7220, and I decided to make the dress on the right with the sleeves from the blouse in the middle.

This involved a little redrawing of the bodice pieces of the dress, and because I'm too lazy to make a muslin first, I've just plunged in and cut all of the pieces and figured I would fudge my way out of any difficulties....

Oh, and then I had to pick the fabric. So, I've had this pink fabric forever. I truly don't remember how it came into my life. I am guessing that it is a cotton/poly blend, and it's rather thin. So, I'm using a double layer of it (and pinning like mad during the cutting and sewing phase!).

Then, I got to thinking about that vast expanse of PINK and had various visions of bad jokes. So, I found the pattern on the right in my stash. I've made the shirt in the upper right corner with happy results. I noticed the vest in the lower right, and it just has three pieces (two fronts and a back)! This meant I could use the pretty floral fabric to tone down the pink dress. The floral fabric has some strong vertical lines and lots of blank space. That will visually slim my appearance. I'll use some of the scraps to trim the sleeve hemlines, the dress hemline, and the neckline of the dress. It'll look like an "outfit" without screaming about it. I hope to show pictures early next week of a completed outfit.

Because I can't always be in the sewing room in the evenings, I am working on this scarf:

It is the Argosy pattern found at Knitty.com. I've been working on it about a week and have finally (mostly) memorized the pattern.

Until next time, toodles!