Skip to main content

The "Flower Lady"

Part III of Amateur Pursuits. 
(Part I, Part II.)
Proper vases were crucial.  Once I found vases that were the right scale and had the same lustre as the crucifix and the candlesticks, I felt much more confident in my flower arrangements.  The vases looked at home with their surroundings.
The rest was trial and error, and continues to be. Here is a visual chronicle of arrangments:
August 10, 2019
August 15, 2019
August 24, 2019
September 7, 2019
September 14, 2019
September 28, 2019
October 26, 2019
As my designs became more structured (and less messy), the Altar Guild began to take notice and asked if I would consider bringing the arrangements on Saturday afternoon so they could be used for all of the Masses at the parish, not just the TLM.
Now, I am known colloquially as the "Flower Lady" by the lovely Portuguese ladies and gents who are the pillars of the parish. 

Comments

  1. Marie-JacquelineJanuary 28, 2020 at 5:18 PM

    Hi Gemma, I put up a blog roll that includes your site. Take a look at the upper right hand corner of mine (best viewed on desktop, I suppose). I really like the way the thumbnail looks! I'm not quite out of the woods yet, but more to come!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. GemmaJanuary 29, 2020 at 7:39 PM

      Hello Marie-Jacqueline! As you can see I haven't been very productive on the blog this week. Hoping to get something up for Candlemas! Thank you for including me on your blog roll- wonderful!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roses for Our Lady: Altar Flowers for the Nativity of the BVM

Altar flowers for the Traditional Latin Mass Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.   Roses, Queen Anne's lace, green poms and crocosmia greens.
3 comments
Read more

Processional Litter & Flowers for the Feast of the Assumption

This year for the Feast of the Assumption, the pastor of our little country parish asked if I would help create a processional litter for the statue of Our Lady.    He had the great idea of repurposing an old table!  It seemed Our Lady was smiling down on me that day when I walked into the thrift store and there it was for twenty dollars: a perfect square, three foot, solid oak table. A few months ago, my kind friend, mentor, and owner of Altarations Paraments in Oregon sent me a box loaded with remnants of liturgical fabric.  I added a white skirt around the bottom to hide the table legs and a carpenter attached brackets for the removable oak rods.  I was a bit nervous about creating the arrangements for the litter. They needed to be as light as possible and secured to the litter to withstand being jostled about in the procession.   I found four plastic oval platters at the dollar store, added a block of wet foam, taped it in place and created the arr...
2 comments
Read more

Hydrangeas, Roses & Holly: Altar Flowers for Christmas

                      Unfortunately, this is the best picture I could get of the arrangements for the Latin Mass on Christmas Day.   However, it may serve as inspiration for what can be done in the most unlikely of spaces.   The architecture of the church is typical postmodern, with no vestiges of the past.  The crucifix was added and the tabernacle put in its rightful place only within the last d ecade.  Who would have thought that the Latin Mass would be making its debut here in our isolated, rural community when there are a handful of beautiful, century-old churches perfectly designed for the purpose not far away! The proliferation of fake poinsettias already present in the church set me in motion to find other examples of possibilities for the traditional altar.  My search led me to the liturgy guy's post Does this 1944 Christmas Eve Mass Look Anything Like Yours?   I was inspired by the...
7 comments
Read more