About me and the idea

A clergywoman now, I've been interested in designing stoles since I was younger. It's partly my do-it-yourself spirit: I always thought that they were the kind of thing I could make.

I haven't found much help online, though--there aren't a whole lot of options of patterns out there, and no one's posting crafty tutorials. Many of the stoles I've found out there weren't that appealing to me. And even the mass-produced ones are expensive.

There are a handful of truly beautiful stole designers I've come across, and I have deep admiration for their work and the devotion it represents.

But now, with the easy options for custom fabric printing, the time seemed right to try my hand at creating digitally-designed stole fabric that could be printed with the pattern on it. Like those cutesy Christmas ornaments of my childhood, only more elegant and less cute--I could make a cut & sew fabric panel with guidance for sewing a stole printed right onto it.

So that's what I've done. Working from my the stoles I most appreciated for their fit, I designed a digital sewing pattern that's printed onto fabric I've designed and decorated for use in clergy stoles.

This isn't my main gig, and I'm not likely to get rich by it. Mostly, I hope to make beautiful and thoughtful contemporary design available for clergy stoles, in a way that's affordable and accessible.

(I don't want to do the sewing, so there's that, too. You're going to have to do it yourself. Or find some other nice person who will. The good news is that our churches tend to be full of people whose sewing skills are WAY past what this requires.)

I am a United Methodist pastor in Redondo Beach, California, a graduate of the Claremont School of Theology.

If you have ideas or questions, holler. I'm not sure where this will go, but so far it's been a lot of creative fun!