Good Knight Part 2: The Tunic

 

Remember when I showed you these arm bracers I made for a Knight's costume?  Well, I finished up the tunic a few days before the Knight and Princess party and thought you might like an update. 

  

The finished tunic.

 

A super quick rundown here.  I found an image the boy liked and set to work on the design.  I used Wee Folk Arts tip for cutting felt and it worked beautifully! 

 

It took forever to cut out but it was so worth it.

I then used spray adhesive to tack it down to the black part of the design.  After the glue dried (maybe 1 hour) I stitched around the Griffin with a running stitch.  Then I cut out a rectangle of fleece that was folded at the top.  You want your fleece to comfortably fit the length of your child front and back.

I cut an oval out of the folded edge for the neck and hemmed the neck opening.  Make sure it fits over your childs head before hemming.  I also hemmed the sides and added eyelets and lacing.  (honestly I'd have preferred black lacing here but Michael's only had brown that day.  Oh and use interfacing where you want the eyelets.)  The next step was to cut up the very center of the front and the back about 6 inches.  Hem that along with the bottom and add any decorative trim you'd like.  That's it!

This was pretty inexpensive to do honestly.  I already had the felt and eyelets on hand so I only had to purchase the fleece (about half a yard will leave you with plenty of extras), the lacing, and the red trim.  Less than $10 total.  If you have any questions about the directions please let me know.

An action shot at the party!  They had so much fun.  I'll try and show you more detail with the helmet and sword in another post (the helmet is my favorite part of the whole thing!).  I'll give you a hint though, the helmet is made from craft foam and the sword is a pizza box and some duct tape. 

 

The fair knight jousting!

 

Good times.

The Beginnings of a Good Knight

Have you missed me?  I know, me too.  This summer has been a hectic one.  I live in Colorado Springs and we've seen damaging hailstorms (yes I need a new roof), an epic firestorm that burned 346 homes, and now mudslides and flooding on the burn scar have become a major problem.  That's a lot.

You may remember my daughter was diagnosed with asthma a few months ago and well, smoke isn't good for her.  So when the wildfire moved into town and started burning down homes, along with it being very scary and stressful, the air quality became dangerous.  We needed to move up our vacation.  So we hopped in the car and drove to NC to visit my family (then I got to sneak off for a week in Italy with James).  While I've been enjoying the travel this summer, I haven't been crafting.  Anyway, I'm back now and feeling inspired to craft things again. 

You know how you get an idea in your head and completely drop everything else to start working on it? Yeah, that was me yesterday.  We got a birthday party invitation for a sweet almost 5 year old we know.  It's a Knight and Princess party and I immediately became all sorts of consumed with making a knight costume.  (We've got the princess thing covered already) I found all sorts of amazing inspiration online for chain mail, helmets, armor, sword, scabbard, and shields.  Here's where I started...

Knitted chain mail arm bracers.

Now I am still just a beginning knitter and I wanted these to be quick and easy.  Could they be done in the round?  Of course.  But I went with a rectangle that gets sewn together on the long side.  Easy.

For my 6 year old (who is on the small side - but don't tell him I said that) I used US13's and loosely cast on 30 stitches.  Then I just did the garter stitch until it was about 5 inches long un-stretched.  Bind it off leaving a long tail and sew the long edges together.  Done!  This was so simple and so fast and I'm not a very fast knitter yet.

I think we'll do this costume together in stages...

Back on the crafting wagon,

Kristin