The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please log in.
Posted on April 28, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing
Years ago I made myself a quick dressing gown from a white fleece IKEA throw and often wore it in the morning between waking up and changing into day clothes.
One day I want to make myself a fancy victorian wrapper, to use in its place, but that’s still in the early planning stage, and will require quite some work.
Then last autumn I discovered that the taxes I owed to the local lord (who provides protection from mice and other small animals) included not just a certain amount of kibbles, but also some warm textiles, and the dressing gown (which at this time was definitely no longer pristine) had to go.
For a while I had to do without a dressing gown, but then in the second half of this winter I had some time for a quick machine sewing project. I could not tackle the big victorian thing, but I still had a second POLARVIDE throw from IKEA (this time in a more sensible dark grey) I had bought with sewing intents.
The fabric in a throw isn’t that much, so I needed something pretty efficient, and rather than winging it as I had done the first time I decided I wanted to try the Modular Jacket from A Year of Zero Waste Sewing (which I had bought in the zine instalments: the jacket is in the March issue).
After some measuring and decision taking, I found that I could fit most of the pieces and get a decent length, but I had no room for the collar, and probably not for the belt nor the pockets, but I cut all of the main pieces. I had a possible idea for a contrasting collar, but I decided to start sewing the main pieces and decide later, before committing to cutting the other fabric.
As I was assembling the jacket I decided that as a dressing gown I could do without the collar, and noticed that with the fraying-free plastic fleece I didn’t really need the front facings, so I cut those in half lengthwise, pieced them together, and used them as binding to finish the front end.
Since I didn’t have enough fabric for the belt I also skipped the belt loops, but I have been wearing this with random belts and I don’t feel the need for them anyway. I’ve also been thinking about adding a button just above the bust and use that to keep it closed, but I’m still not 100% sure about it.
Another thing I still need to do is to go through the few scraps of fleece that are left and see if I can piece together a serviceable pocket or two.
Because of the size of the fabric, I ended up having quite long sleeves: I’m happy with them because they mean that I can cover my hands when it’s cold, or fold them back to make a nice cuff.
If I’ll make a real jacket with this patter I’ll have to take this in consideration, and either make the sleeves shorter or finish the seam in a way that looks nice when folded back.
Will I make a real jacket? I’m not sure, it’s not really my style of outer garment, but as a dressing gown it has already been used quite a bit (as in, almost every morning since I’ve made it :) ) and will continue to be used until too worn to be useful, and that’s a good thing.
blog.trueelena.org/blog/2025/0…
Gina Häußge
in reply to JacobCoffin • • •fwiw, here's the open source tool that I use that makes the prepping very easy: momijizukamori.github.io/bookb…
No need to install anything, it does the PDF processing right inside your browser. No servers involved either, works offline.
Bookbinder
momijizukamori.github.ioJacobCoffin
in reply to Gina Häußge • • •@foosel that's funny, that's exactly the one I use! (It's nice to know that part matches even if I have a ton to learn elsewhere) I was amazed at how easy it made things.
I've only done one TTRPG in the past (they published my interposed files and someone made one!) I've been binding my softcover books as if they're hardcovers, signatures and all, and gluing them into canvas printed with a plotter printer. How did you do the cover for yours? The glossy paper/cardstock looks very professional!
Gina Häußge
in reply to JacobCoffin • • •Oh, softcover binding with signatures that way is something I still need to try 😀
The cover on my core of The Perilous Void was just some 200gsm card stock I have here, originally bought for printing photos on. It has a bit of a matte finish. I printed it and the text block (which I used basic 80gsm paper for) on my colour laser.
Most of the books I so far case-bound as hard covers with cloth, and then used the vinyl cutter to put the title on cover and spine.
Gina Häußge
in reply to Gina Häußge • • •I have some larger books full of random tables (Starsmith and Ancient Wonders) that are too thick to ring bind, so I'm looking into binding options that lay almost as flat as ring binding for them - nicer to look up things on a D100 table that way imho.
Want to try Coptic and Sewn Board for that.
JacobCoffin
in reply to Gina Häußge • • •that's really cool! The Vinyl looks so good! Most of my hardcover books are covered in that plotter-printed canvas (which is nice because I can make full color/art covers) but I did do one with home-dyed bookcloth etched with a laser cutter!
Richard Audette
in reply to Gina Häußge • • •@foosel Prepping the files is a barrier - I wasn't aware of that Bookbinder tool, that looks pretty neat.
I wrote up the steps I used of prepping an epub file for print, some it it may be of interest for this exercise, I used command line tools:
hotelexistence.ca/printing-and…
If I were to do it again, I'd definitely check out that Bookbinder, it looks like it would get around all the command line steps.
Printing and Binding an ePub eBook
Richard Audette (xxxx)