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 arrangments. I wanted them to surround the statue as if they were one solid arrangement. To keep them in place I used Scotch double-sided, indoor mounting tape. The nice thing about this tape is that it is quite strong but also easy to remove the residue later!
For the arrangements I used blue garden hydrangeas, golden roses and alstroemeria, white carnations, laurel, pittosporum and heather.
Happy Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary!
Gorgeous flowers and a terrific story! The golden roses seem to dance through the arrangement. So in keeping with a procession.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Marie-Jacqueline! Always a joy to do flowers for Our Lady!
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