Monthly Archives: November 2009

Here tis; chapel cushion numero tre, dedicated to my youngest son.  This design was chosen because he was such a happy sunny child always smiling when a small boy.  Note the use of past tense, now he’s a teenager he is decidedly less sunny, but I’m sure he will start being nice again.  Soon.
I should explain that the initials on the cushion stand for “in his care”, with the cross incorporated; similarly the cushion I posted about yesterday the initials were for “in his service”.  Just saying, for information like.
When I attended our Auxiliary AGM recently it occurred to me that this was probably the last time I was stepping foot on the school, for a while at least, so I took the opportunity to nip into the chapel and take these pictures of the three cushions; that’s why they’re appearing three days in a row, boom boom boom like that.  And I’m sure it’s nice to have a change from my modelling efforts.  I have done plenty of embroidery and craft projects in my time, but my first love is dressmaking and fashion and always will be, I think.  Thus the heavy emphasis in this blog on clothing and the like.
Have had a little project brewing that I will reveal tomorrow, for reasons to become clear…

This second tapestry cushion I worked for my daughter’s school chapel was dedicated to my eldest son.  I chose this design because it contains most of the letters of his name.  And if you squint a bit and join the first “i” on to the next symbol, you can imagine an “m”, thus it has all the letters of his name.  Well, it may seem like a strange thing to think but it occurred to me the first time I saw the design, and it was just one of the idle thoughts that kept flickering through my brain throughout the hours I spent stitching it.  I spent some time meditating on his name and why we had chosen it; being our first child we spent hours discussing names and drawing up lists, rejecting ones that resulted in funny initials and ones with dubious meanings, honing it down to the perfect name.

It’s often funny, the kinds of things that occupy your mind during a long and drawn-out project, like these cushions were for me.  Sometimes you are just thinking about the mundane nuts and bolts of your life, like bills that are due, what you need to buy next time you go to the supermarket, a meeting you have coming up and what you should keep in mind to say…  Other times you find yourself musing on the big questions in life, or the lives of those close to you.  Once I helped finish a quilt for a friend who was too ill to finish it herself, and she passed away shortly after it was finished.  As I was working on it I found myself meditating on her and her life, and thinking about her circumstances a lot.  It was a very sad time; I’m the sort who usually pushes away grief and painful thoughts, and working on my friend’s quilt was an enforced period of time for me to reflect as I knew she didn’t have long.  She died too young, and it was an introduction to the sad time when we begin to lose our peers, friends in our own generation.

My daughter’s (now ex-)school has a wonderful tapestry cushion project going, whereby people can embroider a tapestry cushion to donate to the chapel on behalf of someone of their choice.  Most people chose to donate on behalf of their daughters at the school, but I did one each for my two sons as well as this one for my daughter, for fairness as the boys’ school doesn’t do stuff like that.  People’s cushions were sometimes a multi-generational affair, with grandmothers, mothers and daughters all contributing to the embroidery of their cushion.  A number of different designs are available and the aim is for no two cushions to be alike but all matching with similar borders in a few colourways and for each design to have some biblical significance (they are chapel cushions after all).  They are used in the chapel for special occasions, and there is a lovely book with photographs of each one and a brief summary of its maker/s as well as its dedicatee (not sure if that’s a word…)
Anyhoo, this is the first cushion I did, for my daughter.  I chose this design because I liked the colours of soft pinks, terracottas and greens, as well as the palm leaf design.
Cushion, specimen 2, to be featured tomorrow, and 3 the day after…