Blackwork Prayer Pocket

This was one of my black work projects for the month of February.

February and March have been challenging months for me.  Most of my good friends have moved on to different states and I reminded all too often that I am living in my own state of....well, loneliness.  The winter has been long and cold, and the sight of the four walls that surround me is getting old.  But on the bright side, (there is always a bright side, right?) I have had the opportunity to carve out more time for reading, studying, praying, and stitching.  This was a project that could combine them all.

This little prayer pocket started out as a bookmark but ended up being something that I keep in my purse.  The pattern reminds me that everything in my life comes from Christ.  I am the butterfly in the middle.  The cross (which represents Christ) is connected to the boarder that surrounds everything (God).  The cross (Christ) is also between me and everything else...the dark woods where the wolves are lurking (trees, peaks and valleys in the lower left corner), the beauty I see in the world (flowers in the upper left corner), my family and marriage (lower right corner), and the light of good and the dark of evil (upper right corner).  Christ comes first.  This idea (or journey) has not always been an easy one for me, and maybe it's not suppose to be.  The more I struggle with it, the more I learn.  It hasn't always been easy to let things go, and to give everything to Christ, and there are certainly times when I'd rather keep things under my own control.  But He knows best. 

I added the letters VDMA inside the cross because they are for the Latin phrase Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum, which means, "The word of the Lord endures forever".  And it really does....and that is something special.

I started with a free pattern I found on pinterest.  It looks like this.  Thank you to whoever created it.  It's a cute little pattern!  I hope it's okay that I tweaked it a little bit.

When I went to put the backing fabric on the piece, I decided to leave the top open so that I could slip a prayer inside and use it as a bookmark.  It just morphed from there. 

 

 

One prayer turned into a couple, plus some Bible verses and some sermon notes, etc, etc.  I switch them all out every once in a while.  

 

Later, I will show ya'll the felt Easter eggs that I've been embroidering.  They are happy, colorful and full of hope that Spring will soon be here!  That's all for today, until another day, have a happy Stitching day!