In the early days of spring, workers at Mordecai Historic Park in Raleigh were removing paint from the main house with wood scrapers using a slow-acting but preservation-friendly soy-gel medium. Restorers had been working around the clock since the first day of winter. Change comes slowly and carefully at Mordecai.

Thus it is that a needlework project begun in 1984 is almost done.

In the waning of the last millennium, Janet Taylor, then president of Mordecai, had the idea that the 1847 St. Mark's Chapel would benefit from cushions for the pews. Inspired by the ecclesiastical needlework she saw on a trip to England, Taylor thought something like that had to be done for St. Mark's.

"And there were so many of us at that time doing needlepoint," Taylor recalled.

The chapel was built in rural Chatham County, then was moved to Siler City before finding a resting place in Raleigh in 1979. It had come a long way and deserved to be beautiful.

So this project was conceived: Each of the 11 pews would have three cushions. Each set of cushions depicts a panoramic scene with 26 motifs including native flora and fauna that would have been on a mid-Atlantic estate in the 19th century, with at least one small mammal, one songbird, one reptile, one bug.

For instance, one of the four triptychs includes a skunk, an Eastern box turtle, an Eastern chipmunk and a robin, along with a honeybee, a carpenter ant and a praying mantis.

The plants, some of which flow from one cushion to the next, include phlox, marjoram and yellow jessamine.

In addition, each chair on the altar has a cushion and there is a wedding kneeler.

Motif matters

Since the chapel was deconsecrated when it was moved to Raleigh, the designers elected to have secular motifs. The exception is the wedding kneeler, which has motifs from nature that have a double religious meaning, according to Marilyn Gordon, a stitcher who has been with the project since the beginning.

Because the pews are hand-hewn, explains Kate Green, another stitcher, each is slightly different in size. So each pew was measured and the cushions tailor-sized. The pew number and cushion number are stitched into the band on the side. Across the back of each cushion is the name of the family that sponsored each cushion.

(Susan Stallings, who joined the stitchers in 1992, bought one of the cushions in honor of her parents, as the chapel came from a community not three miles from where she grew up in Chatham County, she said.)

The canvases were designed and hand-painted by Ann Fitz-Simons. Eight bags of wool floss of many colors were procured and each cushion was put into a kit with yarn, canvas and all.

Eager stitchers began work. The needlepoint is done all in basket weave, a stitch sturdy and simple, like the chapel itself.

The fancier, raised stitches wear down over time, Green points out, and the stitchers intend for these cushions to last a century or more. Each square inch takes about an hour, what with all the color changes from bugs to flower to background. And each cushion has about 79,000 stitches.

Gorgeous -- and ambitious.

Time to organize

After a few years, with a few stitchers getting some of the work done, Stitchers in Time was formed in 1990 to give some organization to the effort.

Fifty-six stitchers from seven counties worked on the cushions. Green empowered 35 people to help, teaching them to needlepoint.

"A friend claimed that it was a condition of friendship with me that you had to at least try to learn," Green says.

Stallings may speak for many when she observes, "I stitch really well, but not really fast."

Of course, the stitching, monumental as it is, is not the full task. When the top and side bands are stitched, they are sent to Julia Rouse in Rocky Mount to be sewn into cushions.

Their plan for what?

When Troy Burton came on board as the new site manager in 2005, the stitchers introduced him to the project. Ever looking toward the future, he asked, "What's your plan for replacement?"

The man is lucky to be alive today.

The intention was to have the cushions out on permanent display. But visiting schoolchildren's inquisitive fingers usually carry the fruits of their play, and these colorful cushions are impossible not to touch.

So the cushions are stored in pillowcases and kept in acid-free boxes in the loft.

The cushions are taken out on request for weddings.

Gordon recalls a time she arrived before a wedding to have a peek at the handiwork on the pews -- and discovered that all the cushions had been turned over, brown side up. The wedding director had decided that there was too much color, or some darn thing, on the needlepointed side.

Over time, stitchers went on to new homes, both temporary and eternal, and today five stitchers remain.

"We have watched people die, we have watched people be born, married, divorced, widowed," Green says. "The thing that holds us all together is the project. We come together to stitch."

The remaining core stitchers -- Green, Gordon and Stallings, along with Sally Sandifer and Lynn Ennis, who is curator at the Gregg Gallery of Art & Design at N.C. State University -- are working to complete the final four cushions.

The general consensus?

"They'll be done when they're done," Green says.

'Stitches in Time'

To keep a record of the work, 10 years ago the stitchers designed a book titled "Stitches in Time." Modest in size at 6 inches square and 20 pages long, the beautiful little book is a marvel of detail. It gives the history of both the chapel and the project.

Gorgeous fold-out pictures depict each of the three cushions that make up each of the four triptychs, along with a diagram identifying each bit of flora and fauna with the common name and the Latin name. It records the person honored with each cushion.

Of the 500 copies printed, one remains.

And here we come to the taters of this meaty story. To help raise money to reprint the book, the Mordecai needleworkers are planning a bonanza yard sale.

Here's another reason the work has taken 23 years: Needlewomen also dally with cross stitch, knitting, crocheting, tatting, crewelwork, embroidery, quilting.

That adds up to a lot of craft supplies in the bottoms of drawers and the tops of closets.

The women are clearing it all out, to sell May 17 on the Mordecai grounds.

And when the final cushion is done, what will the women do?

Green laughs long and hard.

"I will stitch for myself," she says. "For 15 years, all I stitched for myself was Christmas ornaments for the family.

"It's been a real commitment for a lot of people," she says, "I sit in awe of the whole project."

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