Knight Party: How to Make a Knight's Tunic

If you're going to throw a medieval knight party, you have to have the traditional knightly garb, right? I mean, what is a knight without his tunic? Unfortunately, even little knights have expensive clothes. I hunted around the internet and found several outfits that were really great, but not so great on my budget. Rather than buying an expensive costume from a store, I dug into my fleece stash and came up with this awesome tunic. Why fleece? Mainly because the edges don't fray, so that meant no hemming for me and one less thing to worry about :)

Connor's been going through this stage where he sees his sister putting on princess dresses and little heels and wants to do the same, but of course my husband wants none of that. I'm hoping this little tunic will become one of his new favorite dress up outfits!


SUPPLIES: shirt to use as a template, paper for your pattern, fleece for the main fabric, 1 sheet of white felt, leather scraps, sewing machine and supplies.

Making Your Pattern:

ONE: fold your template shirt in half and place it on the edge of your paper. Trace around your shirt with a 1/2 inch seam allowance, and be sure to make the bottom longer (a little above the knees.)
TWO: cut out your template.
THREE: fold your fleece in half, right sides together. Place your pattern on the fold and trace around with chalk or disappearing ink marker.
FOUR: cut out and unfold your fabric. This is your back piece. Repeat to get your front piece but cut the neckline lower for the front.

Assembly:

FIVE: cut out a cross from some felt. Pin to the front of the tunic and sew around the edges to attach.
SIX: on the bottom of your tunic, find the middle and draw a line several inches long.
SEVEN: cut a slit as shown in the picture above, making sure to round the corners on the bottom.
EIGHT: pin the shoulders and sides together and sew the sides and shoulders only to attach.

Turn your tunic inside out and that's it! Again, since the tunic is made of fleece the edges won't fray, so I didn't bother hemming the bottom or finishing the neckline or armholes. For the belt, I simply cut a long strip of leather long enough to tie around his waist in a knot.

I made the tunic large on purpose so Connor could grow into it. It's really the perfect size for my almost 4-year-old, so hopefully it'll last him awhile. Layer a long sleeve gray shirt underneath to get more of an "armor" look. If it has a hood, even better! If you want to get really creative with everything, pair the outfit with some black leggings and boots. Since I had neither, gray pants and bare feet worked just fine for this little knight :)

Check out our link party page to see where we link up each week!

Knight Birthday Party: Invitations

For some strange reason, I've gotten it into my head that I have to make every birthday invitation for my kids' birthdays by hand instead of buying them from a store. I'm not sure where the notion came from, but for the past several birthdays, I go into a designing frenzy where I sit in front of my computer with a Diet Dr. Pepper and duke it out with Photoshop in an attempt to come up with the perfect themed invite. Just when I think I'm finished, the perfectionist in me comes out and I have to tweak this and that until my contacts dry out from lack of blinking and the rational side of me whispers "you should probably buy the invites from a store next year."

I'm sure that won't happen, but maybe by the time my daughter's birthday rolls around this March, I'll come back and re-read this post and remember how much time it takes to design an invite and why store-bought invites are a great idea. Maybe. Until that day comes I'll keep having fun making invites, and Connor's knight birthday party was no exception.

With the whole "medieval" theme in mind, I wanted the invite to have a worn look to it, so I Googled around and found a great free texture to use as the background. I then designed a shield in Photoshop using some free clipart, and added some wording using an Old English font. Not too hard (aside from all my perfectionist tendencies lol) From there, I printed it on card stock and ripped the edges to give it more of a "worn scroll feel."

I then rolled each invite like a scroll and tied it with ribbon.

Ta-dah! Lots of cute little scroll invites for Connor's knight party. They're a really fun change from handing out a traditional invite.

Check out our link party page to see where we link up each week!

PARTY: Knight Birthday Party

This past weekend, we threw my "baby" a 2nd birthday party. It was bittersweet for me watching my little guy running around the house clutching a chocolate covered marshmallow pop, knowing that he's one step closer to being a big kid. He didn't seem to care though. He was too busy eating as many cupcakes and chocolate covered pretzels as he could (and he totally took advantage of that since it was his birthday and I let him eat pretty much anything he wanted :)

To celebrate his big day, we threw him a knight-themed party! I actually started planning his birthday in August because I didn't want to be caught by surprise and attempt to plan it all in a week this year (not that I do that often or anything ;) It paid off though, I didn't feel like I wanted to tear my hair out too much this past week.

As usual, I made all of the paper printables for this party. Between the banners, invites and toppers, I went through 2 new cartridges of blue and yellow ink (much to my husband's dismay.) I just have way too much fun tailoring everything to the exact theme of each party. Like this birthday banner for example. It was pretty simple to design in Photoshop (the knights were made using clipart). A few punched holes and some ribbon, and ta-dah, the perfect knight banner! I'm sure I'll be using it again for future birthdays.

We kept the food relatively simple. Since the party was in the evening, we offered 2 kinds of pasta with marinara sauce or meat sauce and salad. In addition to the main dish, we also offered a bunch of finger foods. The menu might have seemed a little random, but I wanted to incorporate some of Connor's favorite foods in the mix since it was his day after all. That meant working in marshmallows, pretzels, and french fries (I know, so healthy right?)


I covered the pretzel rods in chocolate and added blue sprinkles to mirror the theme. We also covered marshmallows in chocolate and dipped them into crushed graham crackers to make s'more pops. And of course, you can't have a party without cake. Shannon always makes the best cupcakes! She made mini cupcakes with 2 kinds of frosting: Nutella and cream cheese. 

In addition to cousins, I allowed my daughter to invite a few of her friends over for the party and had favor bags for everyone. For the adults, they got homemade Oreo truffles (cream cheese + double stuffed Golden Oreos covered in chocolate). These were placed in little baggies and stapled together with tags that I made with knights and initials on them. The kids each got bags full of toys, swords and candy.

And of course I had to make a knight's tunic for the birthday boy! It was actually a surprisingly simple project (I'll be sharing the DIY later this week.) I thought he'd hate it and refuse to wear it since he's a typical 2-year-old, but once I put it on him, he wouldn't take it off and actually cried when I made him take it off for his nap. It made me really happy to know know that he really liked something I made for him. Getting pictures of him in the tunic was another story though.

Happy 2nd birthday to my baby boy! I'll be sharing more projects related to the party later this week.

Check out our link party page to see where we link up each week!