A chalice at the centre with the host above it, opening into rays. Everything around it is vine: lobed leaves, bunches of grapes and curling tendrils climbing the stems, filling the oval medallion that frames the cup. In the four corners sit eight-pointed stars of the kind old samplers used, with a double border closing the square.

The lovely part is how it is made: you stitch the ground, and the fabric draws the picture. The only thread is purple DMC 552, the liturgical colour of Lent and Advent, and of the 11,449 cells only 6,025 are worked: the chalice, the leaves and the grapes are fabric left untouched. That makes the cloth matter here more than in any other pattern — on white it comes out as you see it, and on ecru or linen the whole design takes that colour. It is 107 x 107 stitches, about 19 centimetres a side, all whole crosses and almost free of isolated stitches, 195 in the entire pattern, so it runs in long stretches and goes quickly.