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Costume Design & Construction

UAF Alaska Native Graduation Stole
or
Making a Stole (Academic or Clerical)

The Project:  This project shows how to make a simple stole in singles or quantity, which may be embellished or not as your use dictates.  It is a very simple beginning sewing project. 

Background of this project: Annually volunteers use the Theatre UAF Costume Studio to make 100-200 simple red satin stoles for the students and faculty of Alaska Native and First Nations descent to wear to graduation at UAF. This visible badge helps to show year by year the increased percentage of Native American students graduating from UAF, and also gives students a simple canvas on which folks from home can do traditional forms of needlework considered suitable for important celebrations.  While many students at UAF opt out of academic dress entirely in favor of their ancestral forms of traditional dress (Kuspuk, skin dress, Slovenian peasant gear, Norwegian Bunad, kilt and sporran, etc.) Most choose to wear the "required" academic dress, with only small nods to family tradition like Hawaiian Leis, an eagle feather attached to a cap tassel, Mardi Gras beads, an Athabaskan leather vest, a traditional dance headdress, or some other small acknowledgement of where they come from, in addition to where they are going.  

Related Links:

• News Article on UAF graduate and her Athabaskan Moosehide dress.

Complete Book of Sewing

The Costume Designer's Handbook : A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Designers

The Costume Technician's Handbook : A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Technicians

 

Stage Costume Step-By-Step : The Complete Guide to Designing and Making Stage Costumes for All Major Drama Periods and Genres

The Magic Garment : Principles of Costume Design

Costume Construction American Craft [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION]

Elegantly Frugal Costumes : The Poor Man's Do-It-Yourself Costume Maker's Guide

These stoles are one of the ways that Native students at UAF have to do this.  If you are an Alaska Native student at UAF you may want to do this project in red satin to send home to grandma so she will have time to decorate it for graduation. Or you may wish to decorate it yourself in order to learn traditional needlework.  (A good place to get beads and advice is at Beads and Things, downtown at 537 2nd Avenue.) People also make these as part of Catholic, Episcopalian, and Lutheran priest's vestments.

Cut out fabric according to the pattern (pattern by Lorraine Pettit). Click here for printer-friendly PDF version. Note, some church stoles are done in a pattern of an 8' long straight strip, or other forms. If you are making a stole for church, ask your pastor what size and shape is considered appropriate to your denomination.  Colors of liturgical stoles change with the seasons.

If you are making multiples, use a ruler and pencil to mark a series of strips.

Fold the strips to prepare to cut the notch.

Using a ruler, cut the notches in each strip at a 45 degree angle.

This shows how the ruler is angled. 

Put the two right sides of the fabric together, and sew the strips to one another along the "V" of the notch:

  Lay the strips flat on a table and clip in the center of the notch as shown.

Press open the seam allowance.  Do not press in a crease along the length of the strips.

  When your strips look like this, you can now sew them along the outer edges as shown in the pattern diagram.  

Make sure you leave the indicated areas open so you can turn the stole right side out when you are done.

A volunteer helps build the stoles for the 2005 Commencement.

Turn the stole right side out and press.  Decorate to taste.

When it is finished, photograph the stole and post the photos to your File folder at the class eGroup.  Post a message to the group letting everyone know you have posted these pictures so you can get feedback.

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