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Hi friends,
It’s been a minute! I have been doing sporadic stole work over the past years while also working full-time in ministry and being a mom. Life is full, and I am happy to say that I have found nooks and crannies of time to create lovely vestments as well. While I anticipate my time being limited in the future, I also am happy to announce that I’m officially back and making stoles!
Thank you for the immense patience with me, and I look forward to connecting soon.
Warmly,
Andrea
Hello wonderful Tailored Stole friends,
It is with a mix of sadness and relief that I announce The Tailored Stole entering a season of hiatus.
In September 2019, I accepted a call for a full-time ministry role that has been a place of deep joy and growth for me over this past year. Our family relocated for it, and I continued my stole business alongside my work in the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane.
But then, of course, Covid hit in March 2020, and life as it had been was obliterated. Friends, the honest truth is that I haven’t been able to manage the amount of stole requests and work since this Spring, alongside working from home and also caring for my three school-aged boys who have been doing school from home, summer from home, and now gearing up for more school from home. The Tailored Stole has been most affected, as I’ve had to postpone deadlines and struggled to keep up with communications sufficiently. The weight of knowing the professionalism of my business has slid into disrepair has been so heavy on my heart.
Therefore, it is both with relief and sadness that I announce that The Tailored Stole will be on hiatus at least through the end of 2020. It is my hope that when life normalizes more from the effects of Covid that I will once again be able to accept orders.
For those of you with outstanding orders, your stoles are still in the works and will be delivered.
Thank you all for understanding. Thank you for the incredible love and joy you all have shared with me in the gift of making stoles for you. I am not saying goodbye for good, and hope this hiatus will be short-lived.
In gratitude,
Andrea
Hello friends,
I have a personal announcement that has major implications for The Tailored Stole.
The Tailored Stole was launched precisely 1 year and 5 months ago and it has been an incredible joy to craft over 150 stoles and other vestments during that time! The most surprising thing to me in starting The Tailored Stole has been the legitimate friendships I’ve developed with many of you during the process of determining stole designs and creating them. Making stoles has been such a rich gift, and one I intend to continue doing.
That being said, I’ve recently received and accepted a call to step into a full-time ministry position. I’m so excited to announce that I will be working with the wonderful people in the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane (in Washington State / Northern Idaho) as the Canon for Discipleship! This has been a bit of a surprising development, as I was not looking for a job. When I began to hear about the Diocese, its incredible leadership, and what the position entailed, however, I experienced a fire in my gut that could only be described as “call.”
While I am excited for this new development, I’m also sad that it will mean less time with The Tailored Stole. The shop will remain open but has transitioned to an Appointment Only business, as I will be limited in the amount of stoles I can make going forward.
If you have a gift certificate or a stole design conversation currently in process, I will honor all of these.
If you are interested in ordering a stole, the best way to do so is to contact me to request a Stole Slot. I’m hoping to have a live reservations calendar on the website soon, but for now kindly reach out if you would like to schedule a Stole Slot or have any questions.
”Thank you” seems so inadequate — it has been an immense honor to create stoles with and for you all. So thank you from the depths of my heart for being a part of this adventure.
Warmly, with my gratitude,
Andrea
There are new designs coming to the website in just a few short hours! I am so excited to share them with you!
I’m going to be honest, I really struggled to find an overarching collection theme for these stoles. The more I pushed, though, the less it felt like it was genuinely representative of the process that had brought these designs to fruition.
So I let my need for a Collection Theme go, and what emerged instead was a natural dissemination of these designs into already-existing collections. Many of them naturally correlated with patron saints I’d already researched, so watch for the newly represented patron saints in the new designs.
I felt like there was a lot of coloring outside the lines during this collection’s creation. For instance, I was inspired by the church calendar with the Kairos stole — the ways Easter both holds and imbues meaning into all the other seasons of the church calendar. That made me think of light and how light holds all the colors in the spectrum. So the Kairos stole, an Easter-white stole, also contains small dashes of all the liturgical season colors. And you’ll have to forgive my nerdiness for a moment — but yes, I did fit each of those colorful segments into precise 7-inch-wide bands. There is a long tradition in Judeo-Christianity of layering meaning with numbers and amounts, so I figure it’s fair game. :)
Another “coloring outside the lines” theme that I was inspired by is the interplay between Lent and Easter. Sometimes I’ve had a tendency to think of Lent and Easter in a starkly dark vs. light way. I’m being overly simplistic with those designations, but maybe you’ve experienced this to some degree as well? Anyhow, I’ve just been dwelling a lot lately on the interplay between these seasons. They’re twin seasons, joined together by an ongoing narrative arch that doesn’t fully develop without the other.
For what would be the motivation to dislodge ourselves from focusing solely on the reality of death if not for the evidence of life and love being the ultimate conquerors? And where would we be without the mystery of hope that seems to only bloom into life from the depths of the grave? It seems to me that beyond just being neighbors, the seasons of Lent and Easter actually develop one another into ways they would lack without each other. And to take it a step further, I wonder how we are developed as we delve into Lent while holding Easter at bay in our hearts, and how we are electrified in Easter while holding the solemnity of Lent so near in our experiences.
Anyhow, I’m not intending this to be a theological treatise — I’m more just sharing some of the wanderings of my heart and head lately. I’m still trying to get language around it all, to be frank, so let me know how this strikes you. I’d love to hear what you think.
All to say — these heart / head wanderings impacted the development of the Lent and Easter stole designs. I found little ways of putting a little bit of Easter brilliance into the Lent stoles, and sneaking a bit of Lenten purple into the Easter stoles.
I’m so very excited to share these designs with you all. If you have a moment, drop me a note to let me know which ones connect with you and where your head and heart have been these days as we prepare to enter Lent together.
Grateful to be on this journey of life together,
Andrea
P.S. Thank you so much to Patricia for writing to ask if I could create audio versions of these blog posts for anyone with vision-impairments. I will be doing so this next week and hope to get some recordings up shortly!
“A constellation is a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or meaningful pattern on the celestial sphere...”
When I think of Advent I think of journeys, of destinations that can only be found by walking toward the next marker... which points to the next... and so on. Advent is not aimless wandering. Advent is a well-worn path through a meaningful pattern that cultivates new-ness.
You may not know this about me, but I absolutely abhor being told what to do. When I feel like someone is attempting to coerce me (you notice that strong word “coerce?” Yeah, I feel strongly about this...) I do all in my power to shut. that. down.
But when it comes to Advent, I never feel coercion. Quite the opposite, in fact. Even though Advent guides the traveler through the same themes and readings each year, there is expansiveness within. During the first years I experienced Advent, (not having grown up with it) I was surprised each year at new understandings and insights that sprung from the experience. Now, however, I know those surprises are intrinsic and I watch for them in anticipation.
Because is it really possible to brush up with the deep magic of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love without being surprised?
And therein is the beauty of Advent: that the Divine always comes to wherever we are and never leaves us unchanged.
As I was creating stoles for this collection and ruminating on Advent, I found many stars and references to journeys emerging. After I noticed that, I also began to think of the communal experience of Advent – this is a journey, after all, that we embark upon together. This made me think of Constellations – star groups that we have determined are “together” in a sense.
So with these thoughts, I turned to Wikipedia to learn more about Constellations. The very first sentence of the article on Constellations floored me. “A constellation is a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or meaningful pattern on the celestial sphere...”
Meaningful patterns?! How fitting for Advent and for the stole collection replete with stars and labyrinths!
Each of the stoles in this collection has been named after a Constellation. I offer this collection to you as a representation and celebration of this meaningful-patterned journey we are stepping into together. May the hope, peace, joy and love of the Christ Child be born in us again this Advent!