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Sometimes, you need to put a big flag in someone's hands and move them out into a processional or pageantry piece and you don't have a lot of time for them to practice.
Here are a few basic instructions that I've found have helped new flaggers be able to wield their flags without mayhem to themselves and others.
park: Always know where the tip of your flag is. If you can see the tip, chances are you will not be poking out someone's eye with it or banging it into the hanging lights or speakers.
park: When waving flag from side to side, use a figure 8 motion rather than a "windshield wiper" motion. It doesn't have to be a wide figure 8, but just enough to keep the flag from wrapping on itself.
park: When moving the flag in a circle, either turn your body with the flag, or remain stationary, but allow the pole to turn in your hands as the flag turns. That prevents the flag from winding up on the pole.
park: Another way to prevent the flag wrapping the pole is for every wrapping motion you do, do the opposite, unwrapping motion the same number of times.
park: if, inspite of all your efforts, your flag wraps or hangs up on itself anyway, do not panic and stop. Keep moving in your choreography, and allow the motion to unfurl the flag, or help it along by grabbing an edge as it flies by you and pulling it straight.
You have a design. You've sketched out the shape, you know the dimensions of your banner. You have purchased your fabrics. And now you are ready to begin.
:zf: BASIC BANNER CONSTRUCTION
There are all kinds of construction variables, of course, depending on whether you are building a sheer banner or a more substantial one. We'll deal with the more substantial one here. A banner with a front, a back and a stabilizing middle fabric.
STEP 1 THE FOUNDATION
the stabilizing middle fabric
This is a good place to begin. Your SF (stabilizing fabric) should be a close weave that does not shift--like a canvas or poplin. Even muslin will do, but I prefer the denser fabrics. Your first step will be to adhere your front background fabric to the stabilizer if your background is designed to be all in one piece. The gluing technique for this attachment that I have found works best is just looping the glue back and forth with about 4-6 inches between glue lines. It is not necessary to cover the whole surface. If there are any puddles or globs, smooth them out before positioning your top background fabric. Do glue all the edges. Now you can safely continue and add large or heavy components knowing that you will not be stretching your background fabric out of shape.
If your design has large blocks of different fabrics, you can use the SF as a puzzle backboard for the jigsaw pieces of your design. And in that case, you can sketch the design right onto the SF and fit & glue your top pieces on one by one. This is a very desirable technique as it will save quite a bit on fabric as you piece expensive fabrics together rather than layering them one on top of the other.
casing or tabs for the rod pocket?
This is also the time to decide how the top pocket rod will be constructed. If it is curtain casing style, that casing can be made from the SF, and the back & fronts glued to it. If you would like to attach tabs, that should be done at this point, or at any time before the back is glued on. The casing can be stitched or glued. Both are equally strong. 6 inches is a good standard depth to make the casing.
An easier way to make a "tabbed" effect than actually sewing and fitting all those tabs (have you ever done that and actually got them all to hang perfectly straight? arrrgggh!) is to do faux tabs. Faux tabs start out as a regular casing pocket finish. But after the back of the banner is glued on, notches are cut out of the casing to make the tab effect. Trim is glued to the raw edges to give a finished appearance. And there are never any tabs that hang funny and need adjusting. You can tell this is my favorite way to do tabs. 
finishing the edges of the background fabrics
No matter how good an idea it seems to be to leave the selvage edges on the sides of your fabrics, DON'T DO IT! Cut them off, and finish the edges by gluing on some kind of trim. Right now you are asking WHY? It's got a lovely edge now, why mess with that? The reason is that in time, the center of the fabric will begin to sag, but the selvage edges will NEVER sag, and then you have a poorly hanging banner. Save yourself all that grief of later having to rip your banner apart by just doing it right in the first place.
STEP 2 APPLYING THE DESIGNS
applique: (jigsaw puzzle pieces) cut and place by gluing down the edges of the shapes. Put a few dots of glue in the centers of large pieces. No need for full glue coverage. Pad with fiberfill or quilt batting for dimension. Trim raw edges with decorative trim. Or finish pieces with serged rolled edges before adding to the banner. Don't be afraid to add dimension by scrunching and forming fabrics in a 3-dimensional way. Think of building your banner as fabric sculpture.
draping: You can add graceful effects by draping fabrics that are fluid and lend themselves to that treatment. They can be draped and free hanging, or draped and glued into a static position. Good technique when portraying things that flow--like water and garments.
lettering: The lettering almost always THE most important part of the banner, so give it proper attention. Make it fabulous, ornate or starkly strong, and make sure it is big enough and clear enough to READ! Remember to check letters for contrast, value and wow factor. Consider padding the letters. This is where you should spend some money on fabulous trims. Letters can be:<LIST>
- <LI>
- traced, cut out, glued down & trimmed (padded or not)</LI>
<LI> - shaped from long strips of fabric and draped into letter shapes chalked on the background (padded or not)</LI>
<LI> - painted on with fabric paint</LI>
<LI> - formed completely from trims</LI>
An easy way to do letter templates is to blow up a font you like to the size you need and print on regular paper. Cut out the letter shapes. Iron a light-weight fusible facing to the back of your letter fabric. Now lay your letter patterns UP SIDE DOWN on the wrong side of the fabric and trace around the patterns right onto the interfacing. When you cut out the letters, your fabric will be already stabilized and the edges won't fray as you work with them. This technique allows you to use quite flimsy fabrics for lettering that you could not easily use otherwise.
ornaments: Glue AND sew heavy beading. (This is the only time you actually need to do some sewing. Sorry, no way around it. Because beading does not have a flat edge, constant movement and rolling will eventually pop off the beading, so you have to reinforce the glue with some stitching here.) Try to add some kind of ornamentation, fringe, bells or some other kind of doo-dad on the bottoms of your banners. The weight of them helps to pull out any wrinkles that may have occured during rolling or transport.
STEP 3 ATTACH THE BACK
Glue the back fabric to the back of the SF in the same way you did the front fabric, just some wide loops of glue. Bring the back and front fabrics up together at the top of your casing, and cut so that they both end exactly at the top of the casing fold. (If you've attached tabs, then of course, just bring the back fabric up to the bottom of the tabs.) You can glue a piece of trim over the joint or not...no one will see that border anyway as it will be resting across the top of the pole. Cut a notch out of the middle back for your pole to insert. Glue some trim on the raw edges. Now, if you are making faux tabs, cut them out, being careful not to cut too low and cut out your casing stitching/gluing. Glue trim on the raw edges.
Add your back design now. It might be tempting to put your back design on the fabric before attaching it to the banner, but remember, you want to work on a stable surface. So unless your back fabric is very stable on it's own, wait until it is attached to add your design. Since it is the back and you will be rolling against any design, it is best not to use padded letters or designs on the back, as they will tend to get very scrunched and look bad after a short time.
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Related threads:
<URL url="http://zionfirefriends.com/index.php?showtopic=296">All about glue
<URL url="http://zionfirefriends.com/index.php?showtopic=1245">Basic Banner Design
<URL url="http://zionfirefriends.com/index.php?showtopic=299"> Basic primer for banner & flag fabrics
<URL url="http://zionfirefriends.com/index.php?showtopic=712">The power of perspective
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Did you know about this event? This guy - calls himself The Shofar Man - has been sending me info about it and I joined in with the world wide shofar blow! Neat idea!
He sent this circular email about the conference which contained a gallery of pics. Thought you all would like to see them as there is all the subjects we cover within.
Though not exactly professional photogs, they are very interesting.
<URL url="http://www.theshofarman.com/conferencepics.htm">http://www.theshofarman.com/conferencepics.htm
As performers, worship artists often encounter the dilemma of receiving the praise of others while struggling to remaining humble and in right relationship with the Lord about it all.
It is a natural thing for people to express their appreciation and enjoyment of a song well-sung, a dance well-danced, or any presentation that moves them. People haven't had much instruction on this in the church, so what do they do? They fall back on the cultural patterns: clapping, shouts & whistles, effusive praise to the performer.
Those are all the sorts of things that feed the soul & ego, and while we are thrilled that our offering to the Lord has been appreciated by those around us, and they have been "touched" somehow....it can be an uncomfortable position unless you know how to direct the praise and compliments. We want God to receive the glory, not us. But how do we do that without correcting or insulting the people offering their heartfelt expressions?
Telling people NOT to applaud is not the answer. They will forget, or if they don't, they will feel awkward about it. Training a group of people to say "thank you Lord! or Amen!" rather than applaud can take years. A proper response for the worship artist, when the crowd breaks out into applause is to acknowledge the applause, and then turn and offer it up to the Lord their own overhead clapping that obviously is sending the applause to God or in the direction of the altar. That allows people to respond, and still directs the praise appropriately.
Years ago, we heard a teaching from a great old lady of the worship movement, Fuschia Pickett. She was a trail-blazer in much of the worship theology most of us walk in today. She told this story that has never left me. She said,
Quote:"I had spoken a message that day that hit home with many of the hearers, and one after one, several dozen of them came up to me and expressed how wonderful they thought I was and how what I had said meant to them. Afterward, I heard the Lord speak to me and say, Fuschia, you know all those beautiful bouquets that were graciously given to you today? You have a choice and whichever you choose is fine. You can either enjoy them yourself, or you can plant them in My heavenly garden, and you and I will enjoy them together throughout eternity.
That night, while I was offering my evening sacrifice, I gave each one of those bouquets to the Lord---He was they One they were meant for anyway, to be planted in His heavenly garden.
I realized also that what the Lord was saying to me was that I was never to demean or trivialize someone's praise by saying "No, don't thank me...it was ALL the Lord!" or "no, no, it was NOTHING....". And that when I had made those responses in the past, it was like I had trampled that beautiful bouquet that that person was so eager to give me. I was never to do that again, but to receive the praise, and then later return it to the Lord."
It was such a good word. It showed me that God wants us to be genuine authentic people, honestly appreciative of each other and preserving each other's dignity. He and we can settle our accounts privately. Isn't that a great solution to the "false modesty" dilemma?
What do you think of the yearly Christmas pageant performed in many churches, where the shepherds often wear bathrobes, and a painfully skinny young boy sporting a pasted beard is playing Joseph? Where the angels have tin foil wings and more often than not, the acting is really bad? [Note: I've been involved in some of these.]
On occasion, I have seen these pageants beautifully, extravagantly, and artfully done and acted, (one of those included a live camel!) but that is the exception, not the norm.
Why is this done year after year? What do you see as the value of all the intensive rehearsals and costuming and prop frenzies? Do you do them in your church? Are you involved? Do you have good memories of being in Christmas pageants from your childhood?
Also, I've noticed a trend (at least in the adult arena of Christmas pageant presentation) where the passion and resurrection is also part of the nativity pageant. What do you think about that? Is it a good idea? Appropriate or not?