Valhalla's Things

Welcome

Welcome to my blog, where I post sporadically about the things I do and the ones I make.

Recent posts

Roll Top Backpack, Handsewn

Posted on July 25, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear

a backpack in a cream fabric with a short dark brown bottom; it
closes by rolling down the top and is kept closed by a strap that
feeds through two D-rings.

I might be slightly insane? Or am I going to prove something about the nature and accessibility of sewing and MYOG1 as a hobby?

I love my modular backpack, but it has a very modern look that is maybe not the best thing when otherwise dressed in historybounding dress, and it’s also a bit bigger than I planned or needed it to be.

So, when one of the shops I buy from had some waterproof cotton canvas on sale I failed my saving throw against temptations and bought a few meters, with the intent to make myself a backpack in a different style.

It needs to be a backpack, because my back doesn’t like asymmetrical bags2, and as far as I know 19th century backpacks weren’t the most comfortable things, so I decided to go for a vaguely timeless roll top model that has the added advantage not to require a lot of hardware for the closure, just a few D-rings.

Leather straps would look cool, but also require some tools that I still don’t have, so I decided to look for some cotton webbing, and when I finally found some in 25 mm and 50 mm width I could finally start on the project.

Except for one thing: thread. As much as I believe that regular n°50 cotton thread got a bad reputation from sellers who decided to cut quality in favour of profit, it is not up to the task of sewing a backpack. Nor that I’d use regular sew-all poly thread either.

I do have some of the thread I used for my other backpack, which would have been strong enough, but it’s also in black, which isn’t exactly the look I was aiming for on the natural / ecru colour of both the canvas and the webbing. I also misremembered it as only being available in that colour (it isn’t), so I wasn’t tempted into doing a full online order of technical materials just for that.

On the other hand, I did have in my stash some strong thread I could trust for this job, in natural / ecru. There was only one problem: it was 33×2 Tex linen, and not suitable for the sewing machine. You can’t handsew a backpack.

Or can you? Of course it’s going to be much slower, but I’m still in a situation where I have more time and space for handsewing than I have for machine sewing. And as for strength, my perception is that for the same stitch length an handsewn backstitch is stronger than a machine lockstitch, or at least it is more effort to unpick (and thus harder to accidentally unravel if the thread breaks).

And so I tried.

And it worked.

a needle coming straight up through layers of fabric and
webbing, in the motion called stabbing.

Having to backstitch everything instead of being able to use a running backstitch of course meant that it was slower than other sewing projects, and any time there were more than two layers of fabric I had to use the stabbing motion rather than the sewing one, which is even slower, but other than a few places with many layers of both fabric and webbing it wasn’t hard.

And to be fair, the seams were fewer and shorter than other sewing projects, and with the usual interruptions and uneven time availability it was done in less than a month, which is somewhat typical for one of my handsewn projects.

the layers of the base pinned into the sides, trying to keep
everything properly aligned especially on the corners in a way
that would be very messy if fed as-is to a sewing machine.

It may have been because of the pattern, but I think it’s relevant that it was also easier than other backpacks I’ve made, with significantly less cursing, even when doing seams that would have been quite fiddly when sewn by machine.

I have to admit that now I’m tempted to plan another backpack using the same pattern or a slight variation, sewn by machine in a different fabric, to see the difference in the time it takes and to check if the changes I think would make it easier to sew by machine are actually the right thing to do. But maybe I’ll wait a bit, other projects are in the queue.

The pattern is as usual online, released as #FreeSoftWear.

Having used it for a while, I have to say that it is just the right size to fit all the things I usually carry,

The fact that it only opens from the top means that finding things that have fallen to the very bottom involves a bit of rummaging, but not having to change a zipper every few years when (not if) it breaks is also very nice, so I’m not sure which shape of backpack I prefer.

the back of the backpack, showing the shoulder straps made with
wide webbing that end in two D-rings, and a pattern of horizontal
webbing sewn at 4 cm intervals to attach accessories.

The soft back of course is an issue when the backpack is filled with small items, but the molle webbing is there exactly because I have plans to solve it, beside the trivial “put something flat towards the back”.

As an object, I’m happy with the result. As a project, it was way more than successful, exceeding all expectations, especially for something somewhat experimental like this one was.


  1. Make Your Own Gear, i.e. sewing or otherwise constructing outdoorish equipment.↩︎

  2. at least not if I fill them with stuff as I usually do with my backpack :D↩︎


Things I Have Learnt At DebConf

Posted on July 24, 2025
Tags: madeof:bits

An unsorted list, including some I already knew, but was reminded of.

  • dpkg-mergechangelogs exists.
  • Sewing your own shirt, posting it on planet and wearing it on the first day of DebConf, is more effective than a badge for making people recognise you.
  • I need to look into a number of tools for testings things (and try to start using some of those at $DAYJOB).
  • Masks are good. masks protect you from debbugs. masks protect you from ring cameras in the hotel you’re staying on the day after debconf.
  • It’s really nice to be chatting of random topics during lunch and discover that you are talking to the maintainer of a package of which you are one of the very few users! (the latter bit needs to be changed :) ).
  • I need to look into sequoia and all of the modern OpenPGP stuff.
  • Even if I don’t have a lot of money, apparently I have even less sense (there will be blog posts on the topic in the mid-term future).
  • I can go to a talk about AI and not hate the speaker (yeah, the bar is pretty low there :D ). The automatic subtitles still failed in the same way as automatic subtitles always fail.
  • Debian gets used in really cool places.
  • At times it is a bit — or a lot — dysfunctional, but Debian still feels like a family.

And I still haven’t watched the recordings of those talks that I couldn’t (or decided not to, because the hallway track was more interesting) attend.


FreeSoftWear

Posted on July 18, 2025
Tags: madeof:bits, topic:debian, FreeSoftWear

There may have been a lightning talk.

Things similar to the rest of this article may have been said.

I think that most people in this room care about running Freely licensed software on their computers.

Some probably would also like, when possible, to use Freely licensed hardware, or to enjoy Freely licensed art.

And then there are very few people who decided that they’d prefer to wear DFSG-Free clothing.

If you make your own, it’s not that different from software: you get a pattern, the source code, and compilation instructions. The compilation process is a bit manual, but there are a lot of people who enjoy that.

It doesn’t have to be sewing, it can be knitting, crochet, any craft that can be used to build something that you wear and has patterns or other kinds of source code. I’d say that a certain tartan also qualifies.

If you’re interested in the idea, these are the places I know of that do FreeSoftWear: two are personal websites, included mine, freesewing is a community and an online platform to design patterns.

And debian has some useful software, including valentina, for sewing patterns, and kxstitch for cross-stitch and other counted thread embroidery.


Federated instant messaging, 100% debianized

Posted on July 15, 2025
Tags: madeof:bits, topic:xmpp, topic:debian

This is an approximation of what I told at my talk Federated instant messaging, 100% debianized at DebConf 25, for people who prefer reading text. There will also be a video recording, as soon as it’s ready :) at the link above.

Communicating is a basic human need, and today some kind of computer-mediated communication is a requirement for most people, especially those in this room.

With everything that is happening, it’s now more important than ever that these means of communication aren’t controlled by entities that can’t be trusted, whether because they can stop providing the service at any given time or worse because they are going to abuse it in order to extract more profit.

If only there was a well established chat system based on some standard developed in an open way, with all of the features one expects from a chat system but federated so that one can choose between many different and independent providers, or even self-hosting.

But wait, it does exist!

I’m not talking about IRC, I’m talking about XMPP!

While it has been around since the last millennium, it has not remained still, with hundred of XMPP Extension Protocols, or XEPs that have been developed to add all of the features that nobody in 1999 imagined we could need in Instant Messaging today, and more, such as IoT devices or even social networks.

There is a myth that this makes XMPP a mess of incompatible software, but there is an XEP for that: XEP-0479: XMPP Compliance Suites 2023, which is a list of XEPs that needs to be supported by Instant Messaging servers and clients, including mobile ones, and all of the recommended ones will mostly just work.

These include conversations.im on android, dino on linux, which also works pretty nicely on linux phones, gajim for a more fully featured option that includes the kitchen sink, profanity for text interface fanatics like me, and I’ve heard that monal works decently enough on the iThings.

One thing that sets XMPP apart from other federated protocols, is that it has already gone through the phase where everybody was on one very big server, which then cut out federation, and we’ve learned from the experience. These days there are still a few places that cater to newcomers, like https://account.conversations.im/, https://snikket.org/ (which also includes tools to make it easier to host your own instance) and https://quicksy.im/, but most people are actually on servers of a manageable size.

My strong recommendation is for community hosting: not just self-hosting for yourself, but finding a community you feel part of and trust, and share a server with them, whether managed by volunteers from the community itself, or by a paid provider.

If you are a Debian Developer, you already have one: you can go to https://db.debian.org/ , select “Change rtc password” to set your own password, wait an hour or so and you’re good to go, as described at the bottom of https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSocial.

A few years ago it had remained a bit behind, but these days it’s managed by an active team, and if you’re missing some features, or just want to know what’s happening with it, you can join their BoF on Friday afternoon (and also thank them for their work).

But for most people in this room, I’d also recommend finding a friend or two who can help as a backup, and run a server for your own families or community: as a certified lazy person who doesn’t like doing sysadmin jobs, I can guarantee it’s perfectly feasible, about in the same range of difficulty as running your own web server for a static site.

The two most popular servers for this, prosody and ejabberd, are well maintained in Debian, and these days there isn’t a lot more to do than installing them, telling them your hostname, setting up a few DNS entries, and then you mostly need to keep the machine updated and very little else.

After that, it’s just applying system security updates, upgrading everything every couple years (some configuration updates may be needed, but nothing major) and maybe helping some non-technical users, if you are hosting your non-technical friends (the kind who would need support on any other platform).


Question time (including IRC questions) included which server would be recommended for very few users (I use prosody and I’m very happy with it, but I believe ejabberd works also just fine), then somebody reminded me that I had forgotten to mention https://www.chatons.org/ , which lists free, ethical and decentralized services, including xmpp ones.

I was also asked a comparison with matrix, which does cover a very similar target as XMPP, but I am quite biased against it, and I’d prefer to talk well of my favourite platform than badly of its competitor.


Emergency Camisole

Posted on July 4, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear

A camisole of white linen fabric; the sides have two vertical
strips of filet cotton lace, about 5 cm wide, the top of the front
is finished with another lace with triangular points and the straps
are made with another insertion lace, about 2 cm wide.

And this is the time when one realizes that she only has one white camisole left. And it’s summer, so I’m wearing a lot of white shirts, and I always wear a white camisole under a white shirt (unless I’m wearing a full chemise).

Not a problem, I have a good pattern for a well fitting camisole that I’ve done multiple times, I don’t even need to take my measurements and draft things, I can get some white jersey from the stash and quickly make a few.

From the stash. Where I have a roll of white jersey and one of off-white jersey. It’s in the inventory. With the “position” field set to a place that no longer exists. uooops.

But I have some leftover lightweight (woven) linen fabric. Surely if I cut the pattern as is with 2 cm of allowance and then sew it with just 1 cm of allowance it will work even in a woven fabric, right?

Wrong.

I mean, it would have probably fit, but it was too tight to squeeze into, and would require adding maybe a button closure to the front. feasible, but not something I wanted.

But that’s nothing that can’t be solved with the Power of Insertion Lace, right?

One dig through the Lace Stash1 and some frantic zig-zag sewing later, I had a tube wide enough for me to squiggle in, with lace on the sides not because it was the easiest place for me to put it, but because it was the right place for it to preserve my modesty, of course.

Encouraged by this, I added a bit of lace to the front, for the look of it, and used some more insertion lace for the straps, instead of making them out of fabric.

And, it looks like it can work. I plan to wear it tonight, so that I can find out whether there is something that chafes or anything, but from a quick test it feels reasonable.

a detail of the side of the camisole, showing the full pattern
of the filet lace (alternating Xs and Os), the narrow hem on the
back (done with an hemming foot) and the fact that the finishing
isn't very neat (but should be stable enough for long term use).

At bust level it’s now a bit too wide, and it gapes a bit under the arms, but I don’t think that it’s going to cause significant problems, and (other than everybody on the internet) nobody is going to see it, so it’s not a big deal.

I still have some linen, but I don’t think I’m going to make another one with the same pattern: maybe I’ll try to do something with a front opening, but I’ll see later on, also after I’ve been looking for the missing jersey in a few more potential places.

As for now, the number of white camisoles I have has doubled, and this is progress enough for today.


  1. with many thanks to my mother’s friend who gave me quite a bit of vintage cotton lace.↩︎


Honeycomb shirt

Posted on May 25, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear, GNU Terry Pratchett

A woman wearing a purplish blue shirt with very wide sleeves,
gathered at the cuffs and shoulder with honeycombing, and also a
rectangle of honeycombing in the front between the neckline and
just above the bust.
The shirt is gathered at the waist with a wide belt, and an almost
lilac towel hangs from the belt.

After cartridge pleating, the next fabric manipulation technique I wanted to try was smocking, of the honeycombing variety, on a shirt.

My current go-to pattern for shirts is the 1880 menswear one I have on my website: I love the fact that most of the fabric is still cut as big rectangles, but the shaped yoke and armscyes make it significantly more comfortable than the earlier style where most of the shaping at the neck was done with gathers into a straight collar.

A woman wearing a shirt in the same fabric; this one has a slit
in the front, is gathered into a tall rectangular collar and has
dropped shoulders because it's cut from plain rectangles. The
sleeves are still huge, and gathered into tall cuffs.
It is worn belted (with the same wide white elastic belt used in
the previous picture) and the woman is wearing a matching fabric
mask, because the picture has been taken in 2021.

In my stash I had a cut of purple-blue hopefully cotton [#cotton] I had bought for a cheap price and used for my first attempt at an historically accurate pirate / vampire shirt that has now become by official summer vaccine jab / blood test shirt (because it has the long sleeves I need, but they are pretty easy to roll up to give access to my arm.

That shirt tends to get out of the washing machine pretty wearable even without ironing, which made me think it could be a good fabric for something that may be somewhat hard to iron (but also made me suspicious about the actual composition of the fabric, even if it feels nice enough even when worn in the summer).

A piece of fabric with many rows of honeycombing laid on top of
the collar and yoke of the shirt; a metal snap peeks from behind
the piece of honeycombed fabric.

There are still basting lines for the armscyes.

Of course I wanted some honeycombing on the front, but I was afraid that the slit in the middle of it would interfere with the honeycombing and gape, so I decided to have the shirt open in an horizontal line at the yoke.

I added instructions to the pattern page for how I changed the opening in the front, basically it involved finishing the front edge of the yoke, and sewing the honeycombed yoke to a piece of tape with snaps.

Another change from the pattern is that I used plain rectangles for the sleeves, and a square gusset, rather than the new style tapered sleeve , because I wanted to have more fabric to gather at the wrist. I did the side and sleeve seams with a hem + whipstitch method rather than a felled seam, which may have helped, but the sleeves went into the fitted armscyes with no issue.

I think that if (yeah, right. when) I’ll make another sleeve in this style I’ll sew it into the side seam starting 2-3 cm lower than the place I’ve marked on the pattern for the original sleeve.

The back of the unbelted shirt: it has a fitted yoke, and then
it is quite wide and unfitted, with the fabric gathered into the
yoke with a row of honeycombing and some pleating on top.

I also used a row of honeycombing on the back and two on the upper part of the sleeves, instead of the gathering, and of course some rows to gather the cuffs.

The honeycombing on the back was a bit too far away from the edge, so it’s a bit of an odd combination of honeycombing and pleating that I don’t hate, but don’t love either. It’s on the back, so I don’t mind. On the sleeves I’ve done the honeycombing closer to the edge and I’ve decided to sew the sleeve as if it was a cartridge pleated sleeve, and that worked better.

Because circumstances are still making access to my sewing machine more of a hassle than I’d want it to be, this was completely sewn by hand, and at a bit more than a month I have to admit that near the end it felt like it had been taken forever. I’m not sure whether it was the actual sewing being slow, some interruptions that happened when I had little time to work on it, or the fact that I’ve just gone through a time when my brain kept throwing new projects at me, and I kept thinking of how to make those. Thanks brain.

Even when on a hurry to finish it, however, it was still enjoyable sewing, and I think I’ll want to do more honeycombing in the future.

The same woman with arms wide to show the big sleeves and the
shirt unbelted to show that it is pretty wide also from the front,
below the yoke and the honeycombing.
The back can be seen as about 10 cm longer than the front.

Anyway, it’s done! And it’s going straight into my daily garment rotation, because the weather is getting hot, and that means it’s definitely shirt time.


POLARVIDE modular jacket

Posted on April 28, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing

A woman with early morning hair wearing a knee-length grey
polar fleece jacket; it is closed at the waist with a twine belt
that makes the bound front edge go in a smooth curve between the
one side of the neck to the other side of the waist and then flare
back outwards on the hips.
The sleeves are long enough to go over the hands, and both them
and the hem are cut

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.

a free cat sitting half asleep on an old couch, with a formerly
white piece of fabric draped between the armrest and the seat.
A piece of cardboard between two seat pillows provides additional
protection from the wind.

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.

the back of the worn jacket, other than being clinched in by
the belt it is pretty straight.

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.

folding the sleeves back by a good 10 cm to show the hands.

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.


Stickerses

Posted on April 27, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, madeof:bits, craft:graphics, topic:stickers

After just a few years of procrastination, I’ve given a wash of git-filter-repo to the repository where I keep my hexagonal sticker designs, removed a few failed experiments and stuff with dubious licensing and was able to finally publish it among my public git repositories

This repo includes the template I’m using, most of the stickers I’ve had printed, some that have been published elsewhere and have been printed by other people, as well as some that have never been printed and I may or may not print in the future.

The licensing details are in the metadata of each file, and mostly depend on the logos or cliparts used. Most, but not all, are under a free culture license.

My server is not setup to correctly serve the SVG files, yet: downloading them (from the “plain” links) should work, but I need to fix the content type that is provided. I will probably procrastinate doing it for quite some time, but eventually it will be done. Of course cloning the repository from the public https URL also works.

BRB, need to add MOAR stickerses.


MOAR Slippers

Posted on March 7, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear

A pair of espadrille-style slippers in black denim with a shiny
black design on the uppers and twine soles.

A couple of years ago, I made myself a pair of slippers in linen with a braided twine sole and then another pair of hiking slippers: I am happy to report that they have been mostly a success.

Now, as I feared, the white linen fabric wasn’t a great choice: not only it became dirt-grey linen fabric in a very short time, the area under the ball of the foot was quickly consumed by friction, just as it usually happens with bought slippers.

I have no pictures for a number of reasons, but trust me when I say that they look pretty bad.

The same slippers, one of them is turned upside down to show
the sole made from a twine braid, sewn in a spiral until it is the
shape of a sole.

However, the sole is still going strong, and the general concept has proved valid, so when I needed a second pair of slippers I used the same pattern, with a sole made from the same twine but this time with denim taken from the legs of an old pair of jeans.

To make them a bit nicer, and to test the technique, I also added a design with a stencil and iridescent black acrylic paint (with fabric medium): I like the tone-on-tone effect, as it’s both (relatively) subtle and shiny.

A pair of open-heeled slippers in faded blue jeans.

Then, my partner also needed new slippers, and I wanted to make his too.

His preference, however, is for open heeled slippers, so I adjusted the pattern into a new one, making it from an old pair of blue jeans, rather than black as mine.

A braided twine sole, showing how an heel has been made in the
same technique and sewn under the sole with blanket stitches.

He also finds completely flat soles a bit uncomfortable, so I made an heel with the same braided twine technique: this also seems to be working fine, and I’ve also added these instructions to the braided soles ones

Both of these have now been work for a few months: the jeans is working much better than the linen (which isn’t a complete surprise) and we’re both finding them comfortable, so if we’ll ever need new slippers I think I’ll keep using this pattern.

Now the plan is to wash the linen slippers, and then look into repairing them, either with just a new fabric inner sole + padding, or if washing isn’t as successful as I’d like by making a new fabric part in a different material and reusing just the twine sole. Either way they are going back into use.


Hexagonal Pattern Weights

Posted on February 24, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:3dprint, craft:sewing

Eight hexagonal pieces with free software / culture related
graphics on top.

For quite a few years, I’ve been using pattern weights instead of pins when cutting fabric, starting with random objects and then mostly using some big washers from the local hardware store.

However, at about 22 g per washer, I needed quite a few of them, and dealing with them tended to get unwieldy; I don’t remember how it happened, but one day I decided to make myself some bigger weights with a few washers each.

I suspect I had seen somebody online with some nice hexagonal pattern weights, and hexagonal of course reminded me of the Stickers Standard, so of course I settled on an hexagon 5 cm tall and I decided I could 3D-print it in a way that could be filled with washers for weight.

Rather than bothering with adding a lid (and fitting it), I decided to close the bottom by gluing a piece of felt, with the added advantage that it would protect whatever the weight was being used on. And of course the top could be decorated with a nerdish sticker, because, well, I am a nerd.

I made a few of these pattern weights, used them for a while, was happy with them, and then a few days ago I received some new hexagonal stickers I had had printed, and realized that while I had taken a picture with all of the steps in assembling them, I had never published any kind of instructions on how to make them — and I had not even pushed the source file on the craft tools git repository.

And yesterday I fixed that: the instructions are now on my craft pattern website, with generated STL files, the git repository has been updated with the current sources, and now I’ve even written this blog post :)


…this is probably not the beginning, you can find more in the archives.