Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of tiger lily (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

One more embroidered flower for the altar frontal and once more it’s not a bluebell. Since the bluebell season finished, I don’t seem to be able to excited about embroidering bluebells – or perhaps it’s because another flower positively catches my attention. This week I couldn’t resist an orange tiger lily (L.lancifolium) and that’s strange because in general I’m  not very enamoured of orange flowers and of all the lilies I like orange ones least. (Gertrude Jekyll, goddess of the herbaceous border, liked them best – in fact Jennifer Potter in Seven Flowers and how they shaped the world, Atlantic Books, 2013, says Gertrude “so cherished the Asiatic Tiger Lily that she looked on it as an old English native”. )

Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of tige lily (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Another busy period – at least 4 wedding monograms designed and waiting to be started.

This evening we went into college chapel for evensong  as the chaplain was blessing the altar cloth. He asked me to hold out each end in turn while he sprinkled it with holy water and said a few words. I whispered to him not to do too much sprinkling on the embroidery to save it needing ironing again as I couldn’t help noticing that in the 2 week its been on the altar it’s already collected a few water marks and possibly a bit of red wine too! (The embroidered ends remain unblemished.) Phew, it will certainly be a challenge to wash, let alone dry (must measure it, the altar is unusually long). But it is good that it is now in use.