FRONTALS, VESTMENTS, AND LINENS - OH MY! BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE ALTAR GUILD.

During every renovation or move, closets get cleaned out, wardrobes need refreshing and additions need to be made. The Altar Guild faced these same issues during the renovation. Our worship space was reconfigured, and a new table altar was added.   We had many vestments that hadn’t been updated in at least 20 years, some were mismatched, some were worn out. Time for some change!

One of the biggest changes to our renovated Sanctuary has been incorporating the use of altar frontals. A frontal is simply a vestment for the altar. Frontals provide seasonal color and beauty to the altar, making it the focal point of our worship space. 

The gorgeous new High Holy Day frontal set was quite a first lesson in fabrics, trims and measures! Custom designed by Watts & Co. of London, it coordinates with our existing set and is a true generational investment from the Memorial Fund. 

We figured we would then “make do” without frontals until we could find funding to add one or two frontals that would coordinate with our existing matching vestment sets.  The green is only a few years old, and the tapestry white is still available. We would take up what to do about the older mismatched sets later.  That’s when the blessings rolled in!  Very quickly, gifts were offered by Altar Guild members and clergy for not only the green and tapestry frontals, but an entire new purple vestment set in time for Lent.  The latest gifts are the red frontal which will match our current set and an entirely new blue set for Advent.  Yea God!!

We have also been blessed with memorial gifts for new fair linen for the altar. The fair linen covers the top of the altar and should fit the dimensions of the altar.  Once again, we planned to “make do” with our existing linens, which were made for the squarer stone altar.  We are lucky to have seasonal linen sets at St. Gregory’s. The first linen gift will be arriving in late July and embroidered with the Jerusalem Cross, which is our ordinary time linen set. Additional gifts have been given for cloths to match our Christmas and Easter sets.    Please consider donating to the Altar Guild in support of linens to help complete other sets.

The Altar Guild is a dedicated group that works behind the scenes setting up/cleaning up the worship space for the services.  The Altar Guild is open to anyone and is continually Making a Difference at St. Gregory’s. No prior experience or special skills are required. If you feel called to serve in this way, we invite you to join us! Please contact Priscilla Miller at prismiller@bellsouth.net or Susamma Cherian at anitasherman561@gmail.com.