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Description: |
Pew Cushion: 'J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion'Approximate date finished: Feb. 1, 2004.
Story/description of the pillow: Johann Sebastian Bach is in the center, with his name above, and the dates of LCH’s St. Matthew Passion concerts below, surrounded by a floral border.
Symbolism: In my home office, I have a poster of artist David Lance Goines’ depiction of the four gospels with the name BACH at the bottom. After staring at it for a long time, I realized I could superimpose the letters LCH over the BACH.
Inspiration: While digging through the rag bag, I found an old T-Shirt which had a bust of Bach surrounded by a floral border. I actually copied Bach’s picture from this T-shirt onto some tracing paper. The floral border I found in a book of cross-stitch patterns and adapted it to the 13-gauge needlepoint canvas.
Motivation: LCH’s performances of the St. Matthew Passion on March 31 and April 1, 2000 were a watershed moment for our congregation. I thought it was important to memorialize these concerts in a cushion. The music at our church has often been identified with the works of J.S. Bach.
Had you needlepointed before? 4th cushion.
What stitches did you use in the pillow? Mosaic, checkered mosaic, basketweave, bargello (combination of long and short stitches to form background).
What lessons did you learn or challenges did you overcome in stitching this pillow? This was actually the first cushion I did which used all seven colors of the palette. I was very nervous about doing Bach’s face, and even gave him blue eyes (which I know now is incorrect—he had brown eyes!). |
