Green Chasuble with Wheat and Grapevine Embroidery for Ordinary Time

Roughly thirty-three or thirty-four weeks of the liturgical year fall in Ordinary Time, so green is worn on more days than every other colour put together. Anglican and Lutheran calendars name the same weeks differently, after Pentecost or after Trinity, but the colour is the same.

That is the argument for owning two green chasubles rather than one: a plainer set for weekdays and ordinary Sundays, and a richer set for the feasts and parish occasions that fall inside the season.

Wheat and the fruiting vine are the bread and the wine of the Mass, the plainest Eucharistic pairing in Christian art. Set beneath the cross, as they are here, they read as the offering the priest is vested to make.

The vine also carries John 15, the vine and the branches, which is why it so often runs the length of an orphrey rather than sitting as a single motif.

It is the older restraint. A single embroidered face keeps the vestment light, keeps the cost down, and lets the fall of the cloth do the work when the priest turns to the altar. The only ornament on the back is a small gold cross at the collar and gold piping along the hem.

If you want an embroidered back as well, choose Made to Measure and say so in the notes, and we will send you a quotation.

This one is the working set: a soft matte green, gold outline embroidery on the front only, and narrow gold piping instead of a contrasting orphrey band. It reads quietly and wears well week after week.

The Celtic cross chasuble is the fuller one, with a broad ivory orphrey, dense knotwork crosses, an embroidered standing collar and a Jerusalem cross on the back. Many sacristies keep both and reach for the plainer one on weekdays.

A standard size chosen on height suits most wearers. Use the size guide on this page and take the row your height falls in.

Choose Made to Measure if you fall outside those ranges or want a particular hem length. A vestment worn every week is worth getting right. Made to Measure is priced the same as Extra Large.

It is cut for it. The embroidery is outline work rather than dense fill, which keeps the front supple and the weight down, and there is no laid-on orphrey band to lift at the edges over time.

Dry clean only. Hang it on a broad padded hanger straight after Mass rather than leaving it folded in the sacristy drawer, keep it out of direct sunlight, and press from the reverse with a cloth.