And, in spite of the fact that I urge you not to make your first stole a work of art, she went ahead and did it anyway. Does your eye feel any design awkwardness?Question: Are we putting embroideries on the stole ends ‘because we’ve always done it that way’?I think we have a design ‘issue’ here. Think about it!I want you to know that the stoles on this page represent a learning experience that took place over a period of  years.You know how when you go to a seminar put on by an expert and you hope to learn something new? Look closely at the folds in the fabric of statues. Why put lovely symbols all the way at the end; down there by the Priest’s feet? Stoles that are 2 1/2 inches wide will take on the neck curve all by themselves.At the time the Warham Guild was active, there were no deacon’s stoles. St. Francis, for Blessing of the Animals:With little birds on each side of the neck cross. What am I missing? (There is another stole decoration method that looks awkward – for a different reason: Some stoles are decorated with bands and short orphreys spaced along the entire stole length. I have many happy stories to tell about that time in my life!

I do see what you mean about the crisscrossing fabric on her chest.

Pleats do appear in the “gathered neckline” stola, but that’s the only place I’ve spotted them. At its simplest, it might consist of a belt with a piece of fabric stretching from front to back between the legs. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Note: The width of the 4 inch priest’s stole pattern may be easily increased to 5 inches. Historians aren't sure what Romans were wearing underneath their flowing togas and stolas, but their best guess is that it was a subligaculum.Symons, David J. Costume of Ancient Rome.
Clothing in ancient Rome generally comprised a short-sleeved or sleeveless, knee-length tunic for men and boys, and a longer, usually sleeved tunic for women and girls. You can’t just go putting symbols and orphreys on the stoles willy nilly and expect the stole to be coherent. It seems to have changed its size and shape over the millennia. Sometimes the material was gathered at the shoulder seam to show the sleeves of the Tunica underneath.

They’d do up the stoles and send them to Father Limpert who presented them at ordination as gifts from the diocese. Because the face fabric wraps around the edge, there is no five-layer ‘stack’ of fabric along the stole edges. I’ve had an expert demand that I send her the pattern. The ancient Romans loved color! The problem with the ‘standard’ method is that you get a stack of 5 layers right at the edges of the stole. The problem with the ‘bits and pieces stoles’ stems from the fact that it is the nature of stoles to go crooked within 5 minutes after leaving the sacristy – the decorations that are supposed to match stop matching and look crooked instead. It was very similar to the perizoma, a tight-fitting pair of shirt pants, worn by the Etruscans, a pre-Roman society that inhabited the central part of present-day Italy, and the Etruscans in turn appear to have adapted the garment from examples worn by ancient Greeks and Egyptians. The toga was the Roman garment par excellence. With the embroidery placed in the hollow of the shoulder, the stole is visually balanced. With a limbus, the upper tunica viewed on her right shoulder (left side of the figure facing us) could still be pink, with the saffron tied in at waist level. This guy – Terry – is 5’10” tall and wears a 42 jacket. The stola was the traditional garment of Roman women, corresponding to the toga, that was worn by men.