Making a Prayer Blanket

Re-Post
Constructing the Prayer Blanket

If you’ve decided to make a prayer blanket for someone by yourself or wish to start a prayer blanket ministry, here are seven easy steps to follow when constructing your blanket. Remember to design your blankets with meaningful and applicable Scripture verses. And try using your imagination to make interesting-shaped pockets.

Step 1. Buy two one-and-a-half-yard pieces of fleece, one piece in a pattern or solid color and another in a complimentary color.

Step 2. Place both pieces of fleece together, right sides out, and line them up. They probably won’t line up perfectly, so trim the edges.

Step 3. Mark a seven-inch border all around the rectangle, using tailor’s chalk. Then cut out seven-inch squares from each corner. You will use one of these for the pocket.

Step 4. Trim down and sew the square on the front of the top fleece (anywhere you’d like) using a blanket stitch with embroidery thread in a second complimentary color. You can use a buttonhole stitch to add interest.

Step 5. Then put the two pieces of fleece back together again, right sides out, so the edges meet. Pin several times across the middle section to hold the blanket still as you cut the edges for fringe. Now cut one-inch widths of fringe on all four sides, cutting up to the tailor’s chalk line you made earlier. Be sure to cut both pieces of fleece at the same time. This gives you a seven-inch-long fringe to knot.

Step 6. Now it’s time to make the knots. I prefer making knots that lay flat and create a border effect around the blanket. To do that, hold your index finger between the bottom and top fringe pieces. Then pick up the bottom fringe and bring it up and around your finger in a counter-clockwise direction, one and a half circles to the tip of your finger. Push the end of the wrapped fringe down through the circle where your finger pokes out and bring it behind the longer fringe. When you tug on the back fringe, the knot tightens. When you tug on the top fringe, you can move the knot up to the top of the fringe. This creates a border around your blanket in the complimentary color.

Step 7. Finally, as you make the knots, pray for the person who will receive this prayer blanket. When you do this in a group, you’ll find that the shared experience of praying together and investing in another person’s life creates a bond with all of those participating in prayer. The Spirit of God is definitely present.

Being Real

What makes someone real?  For most of us, being real is living meaningful lives.

Meaning can seem elusive, because we feel more alive on certain occasions than others, thinking that pleasure in the moment makes us come alive, like falling in love, or surviving extreme danger on an expedition into the Alps. It’s easy to think that feeling totally alive is the same as finding our purpose, living our destiny. I challenge that.

Making prayer blankets may seem boring by comparison to mountain climbing, yet using our talents and skills to comfort those going through tough times, investing in other people’s lives, walking beside them along a harsh path satisfies our need for relevance and purpose. Whether we’re making prayer quilts, or prayer shawls what makes us real is not that we feel like it, but that we consistently use our skills and abilities to bring glory to God. Like Rick Warren says in his book The Purpose Driven Life, “It all starts with God.”

Prayer Blanket Ministry Taught Me How To Pray

The Prayer Blanket Ministry taught me how to pray for others and from that how to abide in His Presence in prayer.

We know God speaks anywhere anytime. It doesn’t matter where we are, we also can pray anytime.

However, habit plays an effective role in prayer, adjusting kinesthetically to the connection with the Almighty Father, as we sense ourselves moving into His presence, inner eyes wide open, exploring, then captivated by His Powerful Presence with a crescendo of unplanned praise playing freely, unstoppable, until a pause between the notes shifts the scene. It takes us by surprise with an orchestra of fresh ideas, somewhere crossing the line between our own thoughts and His, not knowing which is which, not willing to pull back to explore it, not willing to miss a moment of it, held by some mysterious force… when suddenly the phone rings, bringing us back to earthbound lives.

Lego Faith

Prayer blankets remind us that God is bigger than any problem we’re facing…

…problems we thought would never happen to us.

When we feel defeated, weakened, hurting, stripped of health, we soften towards God.

…It seems to be our nature.

Other people’s faith, those who pray and knot, bring their collective experiences of faith together into something touchable, increasing our own faith, …as Legos hooking together to form a myriad of structures, leveraging and bracing, building and expanding.

These fleece blankets with their prayers knotted into the fringe, symbolically reach us, touching our hurt, covering our doubt, rescuing our hope.

And when we lack faith ourselves, we wrap up in other people’s prayers, leaning on their faith, walking with them down the dark road,  their faith lighting our way.

Performing Arts Team on Mission

People gather to watch and hear a message of Christ through performaing arts with music in their language.  They responded....children women and men.

The wind blew and we tethered the staging with cinder blocks

This little boy receives a package of clothes.  Many children recieved clothes for school through their local churches compliments of St Paul's Collegiate Church, Storrs, CT

We're not pointing at the children in the tree, we're teaching them a rap song about the 10 Commands by Alan Root.  We used an interpreter, and later this gathered audience did the hand motions with us.  It was a beautiful thing.