As stated several times in the last few days, I am working on a complete overhaul of the tailoring craft. It's far from being a done deal, I still need to make a formal proposals to my dev peers and get it accepted, but I have high hopes it will be and to have it completed by this summer (my university semester passes first). It would include both robes, cloaks and hoods.
In the meantime, I am almost done with my expansion of the herbalism, leather working and smithing crafts (which has been approved). This will include over 80 new herbal recipes, new herbs scattered across all our domains, the possibility to craft leather gloves (that can be plated) and metal gauntlets (that can be gilded), as well as finally including chitin plating options for both leather gloves and boots. This should hit the server shortly after the HAK release.
The "1 varnish at a time" is by design. This will not change. Varnishes are powerful buffs in many instances even better than potions or spells, and we want you to work for it. Simply consider that making a varnish demands your full attention to get it right. Not going to happen either for curing hides. It's already good that you can cure one hide in a few seconds whereas a single pelt would take you hours to do in real life. It is logical that more than one leather patch can be boiled at once, but curing a hide no. Do understand, the crafting system can produce powerful items (especially once enchanted) and the required grinding is one way to control that no one masters a craft too quickly (it's already easy enough for a few of them IMHO). It is tedious, yes, believe me I know, but it is the path we have chosen for our crafting system.
I would not mind being able to buy crates of bottles, but I suspect there are some other considerations I don't know of yet which explains why this has not been done so far. I will discuss this with my fellow devs, but I make no promises.