Free Design for Music Lovers

For free design~TEXT ONLY~leave your request as a comment.

At a recent church supper, Bob and I were seated at a table with Fred, our beloved Minister of Music, along with vibrant Rabelle and Harold, a  couple who has been involved in nearly every community musical event in the past 60 years.

In the dinner conversation, of course there was much discussion about music.  Rabelle brought up St. Augustine’s quote, “He who sings prays twice.” All the music gurus knew it well, while neither my dear husband nor I had ever heard this phrase.  Maybe that was because neither of us sings and the only way we know to pray twice is to pray twice.

In anticipation of Fred’s retirment last week, I wanted to make something which showed appreciation for all he has done for our church.  For 12 years, he has directed spiritually uplifting choir music and arranged church events with details and pageantry to enrich our worship experience.  Fred has orchestrated moving music and drama for memorable Christmas Eve services,

Christmas Eve ’12

The Marketplace,

the Re-enactment of the Last Supper,  and most recently the Kirkin of the Tartans  which celebrated  the Scottish ancestry of the Presbyterian church.

These kilted men sounded as good as Celtic Thunder on YouTube.

The St. Augustine  quote, embroidered and framed seemed to be a suitable expression of our gratitude and reminder of his service.  In an effort to make certain that the wording was absolutely correct, I googled these words.

There I found that some scholars believe St. Augustine has been misquoted, and in fact, a more accurate interpretation of his Latin words would be “He who sings WELL prays twice.”   So that’s what I embroidered for Fred, because he guaranteed that our choir sang well.  The informational article was included with my card of thanks.

Laying out the design was a bit of a challenge as the frame I had on hand could only accommodate a 4 x 6″ insert.  So it took some fiddling with font size and rearranging the elements to fit.  It was stitched on my Brother Quattro in the 5 x 7 hoop.  The finished design is 3″ x 5.75”.

The text was digitized in PE-Design, then snippets of music were added.  Finally, the praying hands from Embroidery Designs.com were added.

I love being able to custom make something absolutely unique. Fred received many gifts at his retirement celebration, but I am certain this gift was one-of-a-kind–just like Fred.

This would make a nice gift for music teachers and choir directors.

If you would like this design, TEXT ONLY, leave your request as a comment.  I have put in  three color stops for ease in positioning the text to fit whatever additional designs you may want to import.

For the celebration of Fred’s retirment, I brought this lemon pound cake.  This is a great recipe and it was very well  received.  I used my square angel food cake pan with the Fostoria square pedestal cake stand.  It really did look nice and tasted great.

Lemon Pound Cake

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

 3 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter at room temp (2 sticks) I just used regular butter.

3 cups sugar

6 eggs at room temp

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

1 1/4 tablespoons grated lemon peel

1 cup sour cream

    Grease tube or bundt pan.   Dust pan with flour; tap out excess.

    Sift flour, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl at medium speed until fluffy.    Gradually add sugar and beat 5 minutes.   Add eggs 1 at a time, beating just until combined after each egg is added.  Beat in lemon juice and peel.

    Using rubber spatula, mix in dry ingredients.  Mix in sour cream.  Pour batter to prepared pan – batter will be thick.

    Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour 20 minutes.    Let cake cool in pan on rack 15 minutes. Cut around cake in pan. Turn out cake.   Carefully turn cake right side up on rack and cool completely.

        For an extra touch – drizzle glaze made of 1 cup confectioners sugar and 2-3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice over cake.

NOTE:  I punched holes in the cake with an old 4 prong potato baker and poured the glaze over the cake and into the holes.  Also, I added 1 tablespoon of grated lemon peel to the glaze. Then the cake was garnished with twisted lemon slices.