A bachelor tip - fabric glue. There are types that are hand washable. In the service we would glue our rank to uniforms then hand stitch. With low-stakes things like a dark cloth from a T-shirt, just glue it.Oh, and my sister sewed up the sleeve holes, which were never a bother, less so now.
I have had a BTZS-esque cloth darkcloth (I always jokingly called it my camera foreskin because of the way it attached) that worked well enough with a 4x5. I currently own a Calumet "horse blanket" that is light enough and cool enough, and works fine with my 5x7, and can be used in a pinch with my 5x12 if I forget the big dark cloth, but it is still a little translucent. The current go-to is a Sawtooth Designs "horse blanket" that is ALMOST big enough to use on my 14x17. It has the best opacity of any that I've had, and is still breathable so that I don't suffer under it in hot weather. A friend of mine has some rubberized thing that is truly opaque, but he'll emerge from under it in a snowstorm in January with a sweat. I've stayed with the horse blankets because they don't get in the way of operating the camera when it comes time to insert the film holder and take the picture. The problem I found with the hood type dark cloths is that they had a tendency to wiggle the camera when removing them, and if you didn't have the rear standard completely locked down, it would jolt the composition and you'd have to start over.
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