I'm a huge fan of Game of Thrones and the books that the show is based on, but my dad is the person who introduced me to it in the first place! He saw the Game of Robes I had made for myself and liked it so much that I decided to surprise him with one of his own! His favorite house is the Stark house, so I decided to make his robe in their colors (gray and white) and with a direwolf on it, the Stark family sigil.

I actually made this last summer, but I figured with the new season just starting, this would be a perfect time to post this project!

Step 1: Design and Make the Robe Pieces

I made this robe in a similar way to my Melisandre robe but since I already had a bathrobe to base my pattern on, this one was much simpler. I made a few changes to the original robe pattern, but kept the same basic shape. The robe I was basing my robe off of had very slumpy shoulders and the shoulder seam hit somewhere around the middle of the upper arm, which was fine for a robe around the house, but not fine for a robe as epic as this! I wanted the shoulders to fit more like a jacket, with the shoulder seams at the actual shoulders. To make this change, I had my dad try on the original robe and I used pins to mark a new line where I wanted the seam to fall on his shoulder. As you can see in the picture, this was several inches above the original seam. When cutting out the sleeves and body pieces, I followed the new, pinned line, instead of the original seam. Don't cut your original robe! Just cut underneath along that line. I used polar fleece, which is a pretty forgiving fabric.

I cut out the back piece first. I folded my fabric in half the long way and arranged the original robe also folded in half with the folded edges lined up and cut around it and a long the new shoulder seam line. I also increased the length but cutting several inches down from the bottom hem of the original robe.

To make the front pieces, I unfolded my big piece of fabric and the back piece I had cut out and put the back piece on top of the big piece of fabric. Since I wanted both front pieces to overlap with each other so it can wrap all the way around, I folded the back piece diagonally from the inside of one shoulder to the bottom hem of the opposite side. It's a little difficult to explain this, so I have it noted in the pictures as well. Make sure that these are mirror images of each other, especially if your fabric has a distinctly right and wrong side.

I cut out the sleeves in the same way as I cut out the sleeves for my Melisandre robe, by arranging them along a folded line and then cutting them out, making sure to cut out along the new shoulder seam. I also cut out pieces for belt loops and the sash, at this point, in the same way as the first robe.

Step 2: Laser Cut and Sew Sigil

I had access to a laser cutter so I decided to use this to my advantage. You could easily cut this out by hand if laser cutting is not an option for you.

Always make sure whatever fabric you are cutting is safe to cut with a laser cutter and always wash it thoroughly beforehand. Some materials can produce dangerous fumes when they are burned, so make sure whatever you are cutting is safe. Laser cutters work very well with natural fiber fabrics like cotton and wool, however I was using a fleece that is 100% acrylic, which is safe to use with a laser cutter. I used a 120 watt Epilog laser cutter and there wasn't a setting for acrylic fabric, so I had to do a little experimentation in order to find a setting that worked well with the fabric and it probably won't be the same on every laser cutter. Generally, a high speed and low power is what you want to aim for. The laser slightly melted the edges of the fabric, creating a very nice, clean line. You don't want it to melt the edges so much that it distorts for image though! Like I said, some experimentation will probably be required.

I wanted to use the sigil from the TV show, but because of the shape, it looked more like a slightly blobby rectangle when viewed as a silhouette as it would have been cut out on laser cutter. I looked around on the internet for a properly fear-inspiring direwolf and ended up buying this vector image from a website. I think it looks very ferocious!

I cut it in a few different sizes to see what would fit best on the back of the robe and also to see how small I could get it while still maintaining a high level of detail.

I tried a few different sizes on the back piece of the robe, then, when I had the size and arrangement I wanted, I pinned it down securely to the fabric. Since there are so many little pieces sticking out from the design like teeth and pieces of fur, I used a lot of pins to keep it all in place. To sew it onto the back, I used a thread in the same color and sewed as close to the edge of the wolf as possible in order to keep the edges from curling.

I found it easier to sew this on before sewing the main pieces together so you have smaller pieces to work with and don't have to fit an entire polar fleece robe through your sewing machine.

Step 3: Sew the Body of the Robe Together

I sewed the robe together pretty much the same way I sewed this robe together. I sewed the front pieces and the back piece together, including the belt loops and attached the sleeves. It was starting to look pretty good, but something was missing...

Step 4: Cut and Sew Collar

In this famous image Eddard Stard has a huge furry collar and I wanted to emulate that look in this robe, while still maintaining some lever of wearability and practicality. I lucked out somehow and found a furry fabric that was 100% cotton, machine washable and on red-tag clearance, the golden trifecta. The collar presented a challenge because I wanted to keep the look of having a huge furry collar, but also make sure it didn't cover up the awesome direwolf on the back. To accomplish this, I made a pattern piece that was slightly leaf-shaped for the front of the collar that kind of flattened into a shorter rectangular part that would be the part around the back of the collar, as you can see in the first picture. To cut it out, I placed the flat part against the folded edge of the fabric so when it was cut out, it would look like a semi-circle.

I cut two layers of white polar fleece, a layer of cotton batting and one layer of the furry fabric. The two layers of fleece and batting would make the collar more plush and add stability to the flimsy, furry fabric. To sew them all together, I put the right sides of the fabric together and sewed around the outer edge of the semi-circle. Then, I turned it right side out, marked the center of the back of the robe and the collar and pinned the collar to the robe with the right side of the collar against the wrong side of the robe. This is so that when I flip the collar back over, the seam will be hidden underneath it.

You can see that the collar doesn't cover the awesome wolf on the back of the robe.

Step 5: Present the Robe!

My dad knew I was making something since I had to have him try on the robe to get the shoulder seam position, but he didn't know what it was. He was thrilled with it and has worn it as his Halloween costume and to several other events since then!