body armor

We have been challenged to look deeply into ourselves to discover what we are the most afraid of... 


My greatest fear is that my children could lose their faith. My body amour—my protection against this, is to wrap them in scripture. When they are troubled, scared, in doubt, seeking guidance or feeling in need, I want them to turn to scripture to read God’s words and be comforted in the warmth of His love. To this end, I will be constructing a quilt sewn together from the pages of a bible. 


While I have a bible collection at home, each one is special either being attributed to a milestone in my life, a gift, or an antiquity. I will not use them for this project. Therefore, to find a bible for my project I searched several thrift stores, added one more to my collection and found the bible below.  

To get both of my children involved in the project, my eldest came home from college for a long holiday weekend. Together, the three of us searched for our favorite versus. The next step was the  hardest for me. The idea of cutting apart a bible, destroying it, is very contradictory to me. In the end, my eldest daughter helped me. She cut the pages for both the front and the back of the quilt. 

Two layers of batting are used to emphasize the separation between the time of the prophecy and the time of fulfillment.

Having gotten the front and back pieced together, with the batting nestled between them, I selected crimson wool yarn ties to bring the layers of the Great Story together. Crimson was chosen for the sacrifice that Christ made for each of us. Wool was selected both because Christ is the Lamb and because of the fleeces that we continually put before God.
 

The binding is made from pages from both the Old and the New Testaments to show that while there is separateness, there is also unity. 

Sarah, my youngest, is clothed in white: a symbol of her innocence, an innocence that needs to be protected. Protect the child and the mother is protected.

The pages of a New English Bible have been sewn together with a tight stitch. Each page has been chosen by one of my children. They have highlighted some of their favorite versus. The Old Testament forms the back; the New Testament forms the front showing that the new covenant has replaced the old.

The size: seven pages across and seven pages down was an almost unconscious—conscious choice, meaning that although it was chosen deliberately, it was because it seemed the obvious choice to use a divine number.  

The time that was spent with my children picking out pages and versus to be included in this piece was an incredible time of bonding as we shared scripture that is special to us. Through their continued interest in the project and comments that they have booth made since we worked on it together, I feel that this has been a very successful time spent together in firming their beliefs and confirming in their minds how important Christ is to each of us.

Sewing the pages together was an incredible journey. I am not a seamstress. I sewed pages together the wrong way several times and had to pick the thread back out. The delicacy of the paper made this even more of an issue. Some of the pages were ruined.