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I’ve had this project hanging out on my To Do list for quite a while. About a year, in fact. A few days ago, I finally finished it. With Sugar’s “help”, of course.
Mr. Gecko is tall. Very tall. Clothes are easier to find here than they were in Arizona, but finding a houserobe has been much more difficult. I’ve looked, and robes are made that are long enough to come past his knees, but they are pretty expensive. I don’t remember which one of us suggested it, but we finally decided that I’d make him one.
When we went to Memphis last year, my Granny and I went to a fabric store that was having a sale. After a phone call (cell phones make things so easy), I picked up a few yards of two different fleeces, a brown fuzzy one and a smoother camouflage one. I looked at patterns for robes, but none of them were quite right.
Instead, I used the robe that Mr. Gecko has been using since before we were married as a template. It was a pretty basic one to follow, with limited seams and no sleeve bias. I had him try it on so that I could measure how much longer it needed to be, then got to work.
I discovered quickly that the fabric pencils that I had didn’t really show up on the camp fleece. I can’t free cut a straight line to save my life, so the cutting part was a bit tedious. Fortunately, the body of the robe is one piece, so piece cutting was limited. I cut the brown fleece with a couple of extra inches around the edges, since Mr. Gecko wanted the fuzzy one on the inside and we thought a border looked nice. I also cut two pieces of each fleece for lined sleeves, a long piece of brown fleece for a belt, another piece of brown fleece to finish out the neck lining, and three little pieces of camp for belt loops.
After the cutting came the pinning. So much pinning. Sadly, the pictures of the middle part of the project are lost in the ether. After I had pinned the body pieces, I had to set it aside for a few days, fortunately, as it turned out. When I picked it back up again, I realized that I had pinned it wrong, and the brown border would end up inside the seams. I unpinned those pieces and repinned them the right way. After that, I wrote a list of what order I needed to do things so that I wouldn’t forget anything. The big seams were machine stitched, and the smaller seams and pieces I hand stitched.
Overall, I like how it turned out. It’s mid-calf length, and the sleeves hit just past his elbow, at his request. He also says that it is very warm. It doesn’t look like it was professionally made, and some of the seams are a little wiggly, but it fits Mr. Gecko and he likes it, so I’m happy. Sugar is still convinced that I made it for her, so I may take the leftovers and turn them into a bed or blanket.
Gnotting Gecko 