United Methodist Church completes fabric restoration

Members of the Aurora United Methodist Church were able to admire the new glow of the church’s large cross in the sanctuary during their Feb. 2 Sunday worship after spending two weeks restoring the fabric around the cross.
“This cross is a powerful presence in our worship and ministry,” said Pastor Michelle Reed. “It means a lot to us as we find it to be an inspiring symbol of our faith in the risen Jesus.”
Reed said the fabric restoration was one of many projects planned to renovate the church as part of United Methodist’s 150th anniversary. 
“We wanted to have this done this year because we’re celebrating 150 years,” Reed said. “This is one of the things that we’re doing this year. All year long, we’re doing things and this is the first thing we got on the calendar that we wanted to do.”
Leading the project was congregation member Harriet Barron, who was the only volunteer to have assisted with all three fabric projects for the cross since the church was built in 1976. 
“It pleased the architect that built it when we built the church,” Barron said. “He wanted to just lay it over flat. No gathers or anything, just lay it flat. It was ugly as heck. My mother was the one who came up with the idea of doing the gathers in the middle.”
The first two times Barron volunteered with the fabrics, she worked alongside her sister, Evelyn May who passed away in 2023.
“The first time we did it, we worked over in the section (by the organ) and we had more room then because we didn’t have the organ there,” Barron explained.
The project began on Monday, Jan. 20 with more than 20 volunteers from the church and the community working together to remove the heavy frames from the cross.
Laying out the two large frames in the front pews and the smaller frames in the church’s narthex, the volunteers removed the old cloth from the frames.
“We had the guys with lifts hauling stuff around,” said Dottie Anderson, another volunteer. “It was a great turnout!” 
After removing the frames, volunteers had to pull out the tacks and tap that had kept the fabric together for 29 years.
“We had to pull tacks out to get this old fabric off,” Barron said. “We stapled it around the edge so we had staples to pull... We had thrown them in the trash, but once in a while, they would slip in the crack between the pew. We said, ‘Well if we hear somebody hollering...’”
Barron recalled the time that they had gotten fabric that didn’t work for the frames from a business in Lincoln.
“They just sent some out, but they wanted to just put it flat on the frame,” she said. “Just lay it out flat and (the late Rev. Merwyn Davidson) threw the fabric over there on the floor... We said, ‘Aren’t you going to send it back to them?’ (he says) ‘Nope.’ I guess they were kind of ornery to him when he called the first couple of times about it. He was really unhappy with them.”
During the first week of the project, volunteers began measuring out the new fabric, which was 103 yards in total length.
“Now this time with the fabric, I bought it from the Drapery Den,” Barron stated. “We had to order it special. They had made in India for us.”
The volunteers measured out four different sections for each frame before cutting them and sewing them together with their sewing machines.
“It’s four lengths, but curves at the bottom so they’re different widths, but the width where we put our seams needs to match where those supports are in the middle,” Anderson explained.
While keeping the fabric on tight, they had to gather the fabric at the top to create and maintain the gathers throughout the frame.
“It’s a history thread that I’m using and I zigzag over the top of it, because we have to do something that we can pull pretty hard because the fabric is long,” she explained. “Even the bigger ones.”
Not realizing how thick the fabric would be, Anderson and Barron noted that it had been thicker than they expected.
“It was so thick where we needed to fold it and pleat it that we couldn’t get the sewing machines over the top of it,” Barron said. “We had a heck of a time.”
“I increased my vocabulary a few words,” Anderson added. “I broke a number of machine needles.”
The next tricky part of the restoration was securing the fabric with tape and tacks around the frames.
“We had to pull it pretty tight so it doesn’t sag after you get it up there because the fabric has the tendency to stretch,” Barron explained.
While restoring the fabric took longer than expected, the time the volunteers spent together triumphed over every obstacle. 
“The very best part was working for two weeks with people I didn’t know,” she said. “By the end it was family. It’s a real bonding experience. It goes way beyond the fabric and work. Every day, people would just show up to help.”
Anderson said it wasn’t just members of the congregation who helped with the fabric restoration, but other members of the community were ready to assist with anything.
“They would just filter in and out and do whatever we asked,” she said. “There was a lot of laughter, a lot of stories, shared experiences. It was a very fun bonding experience.”
Due to the weight of the frames, all hands had to be on deck to lift them from the pews with a lift being used to carry the volunteers and frames to put them back into place.
“There were metal ramps and they were meant for a lawn mower to go up,” Barron said. “These lifts were considerably bigger than a lawn mower and so they put boards underneath them, big chunks of wood under them. We were hoping that the ramp would hold it. It still creaked.”
Barron and Anderson expect the fabric will last longer than that used for the last restoration projection.
“The first lasted 20 years and the next one lasted 29 years,” Barron stated. “Hopefully this will last 50, especially because we won’t be here. I didn’t think I was going to be here for this.”
With the completion of the fabric restoration, Reed said the next step is to have the carpet and pews refurbished at a later date.
The pastor said the fabric restoration project was made possible not only through the work of the volunteers but also through generous donations from the estate of congregation members Deryl and Janis Armold and a donation from the Barbara Deitrich Memorial.
“We’re very fortunate to be able to do it,” Reed said.
The celebration for the church’s anniversary is set for Sunday, Sept. 14.
“There’s a lot on the books, but nothing really planned,” Reed said. “A lot of ideas about what we’re going to do, but this was what we wanted to do as part of our 150th anniversary.”