Tutorial: Child's knight costume tabard made from a tea towel

This was the first part of my son's St George's Day Knight's outfit which was made at short notice and with a few items I picked up from our local supermarket. A tutorial for the Cowl shown below is also available.

This design has arm holes, fastens at the back and is also reversible. I'm also working on a simpler 'hand towel tabard' tutorial too, as I sort of made this up as I went along.

I found this pack of red and white teatowels quite reasonably at the supermarket, I used the middle one as it already had red stripes, and it came wrapped in this handy red cotton tape which I also used, however its probably easier to use a plain white towel and then add your ribbon (cotton tape or even red fabric paint) in the right places afterwards. The other two teatowels I've saved for other projects, or they might just end up in the kitchen drawer.

What you will need:
1 Tea towel (with red stripe or plain white)
Red ribbon, or cotton tape
Velcro
Hemming web
An existing T-shirt (for sizing)
4 Silver buttons (optional)

1. Take your subject and wrap the teatowel around them to check if it will fit. Place the teatowel right side down, and bring the two sides into the middle. Press the fabric to keep in shape, and turn over.

2. Now time to cut the arm holes and a dip for the neck. I used an existing T-shirt to work out the size for the arm holes (once hemmed these will be larger - perfect for growing room) then I cut a triangle out of each corner giving the garment a sort of 'house shape, unfold and pin a hem in the V shaped void. Copy the neck line of the t-shirt onto the middle of the front and cut. Now pin your hems.
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3. If you have an over locker, use it to seal the ends to stop fraying, otherwise use hemming web or, as I did, use a close edging stitch to bind the ends. 

4.  Lay the garment out flat, lay the red ribbon/tape horizontally across the centre allow for a good 1 inch overlap at either end and cut, cut a matching piece of hemming web and sandwich this between the tea towel and the ribbon, folding over the ends. Iron to secure, as per your web's instructions. If you are using a plain tea towel attach the vertical line of the cross in the same way, running from the neck to the bottom.

5 .Line up the arm V slots and overlap the top tabs, pin and sew together.

6. There are many ways you could choose to fasten the back of the tabarb; buttons/toggles/drawstring, but I went with Velcro straps. To make the straps, I took two 6 inch sections of the cotton tape, hemmed both ends (making them about 5 inches) then cut two 3.5 inch sets of Velcro (male and female). I used sewing Velcro but the new iron on kind would be much easier. Attach the 'loop' piece of the Velcro to the end of the straps (leaving 1.5 inch free), repeat on the other strap. Line up your strap with the 'scratchy' Velcro in two places on the back of the garment, attach the Velcro to the tea towel in these places and attach the corresponding strap directly opposite.

7. Technically you can finish here, but I decided to add decorative buttons to the corners of the straps - I quite liked the idea of the back being decorative, and as it turned out this made the whole thing reversible. The buttons were probably the most expensive part of the garment though, costing as much as the set of 3 tea towels (shhh don't tell Mr S).

This is the back of the tabard on my son - still plenty of room for him to grow.

And that's it, pop a grey top underneath and you're away (to a land of castles, dragons and Damsels in distress.

Tutorial: Child's knight costume cowl

I made this as part of my son's St George's day Knight outfit the rest of the items are also available as tutorials.

He was determined he wasn't wearing a helmet, so I decided to make him a 'chain mail' cowl. Originally I considered knitting one but we were on a tight deadline and quite frankly I can't knit anything that isn't rectangular, so instead I cobbled together this which is simply made from 2 grey flannels. To give you an idea of size, my son is 3, although you can make alterations to fit a larger child. 

What you'll need:

2 x Grey flannels

Sewing thread & needle

Hemming web

Iron on Velcro (2 inches)

1. Cut off all tags and labels. My flannels were 30cmx30cm and cost £1 each from tesco.

2. Put both right sides together and chalk on your "hood" shape. The easiest way to do with is to use the outline of an existing hood - this way you will also get a good fit. You'll see I've extended the hood outline to the corner of the flannel, this will form the back of the cowl and give the hood a flared out look.

3. Now to form the hemming. You can either: sew directly on the chalked line, cutting the excess leaving a 1.5cm hem and then use hemming web to seal the hemming down, or if using a sewing machine, leave room to double over the hem sew this first before joining the two fabrics together. I decided to cut the hemline out and then sew. KEEP THE EXCESS CUT OFF FOR LATER.

4. My sewing machine is currently broken, so I ended up hand sewing the hood outline. This worked out well as when I reached the top existing hemline of the flannel I was able to blanket stitch the two edges directly together, which gave the front a nice smooth line with no overlap (see above, inside left, outside on the right).

5. Turn inside out and check stitching. Now turn back and start using the hemming web to seal down the internal hem on both sides. This should stop the towelling from fraying. That's the main hood done, just the front fastening to go.

6. Remember that excess 'cut off' we kept from earlier? We're going to use this to form a 'chin strap' close at the front, to keep the cowl on when it's wearer is chasing dragons :) Because my flannels had this ribbing detail I simply cut this out from both pieces to form my straps (if your flannels are plain, you can always cut and fold some of the toweling for this). Blanket stitch the edges to prevent fraying. Now cut male and female Velcro to fit the strap, leaving a gap the width of your hemming web.

7. Cut two pieces of hemming web to the width of your strap (outlined above in red).  Having worked out where the chin will go, mark this on the inside of the cowl on both sides (I was lucky his chin was where the ribbing detail was). Sandwich the web inbetween the 'strap' and the chalk 'chin' mark, keep to the width of the web to allow room for your velcro. Firstly take the 'scratchy' side of the Velcro, this needs to be facing outwards (so little faces don't get scratched) iron it into position as per Velcro instructions, now take the 'loop' side of the velcro and apply this to the inside of the opposite strap. If unsure, try the fastening out a few times before permanently applying.

And there you go, all done! Time to check it fits! You can add some elastic around the neckline or instead of vecro straps make a drawstring close.

St. George's Day - Knight's Costume

JJ's nursery let us know the other day that on Monday they'd like it if the kids could come dressed as dragons, knights or princesses for St. George's day. It was quite short notice and as he's is not into dressing up and refuses to wear anything 'fancy dress' at the moment apart from his cowboy hat - there didn't seem to be any point in buying an expensive costume just for one day.

So with a little imagination and a small amount of resources I made him this outfit, complete with Tabard, Cowl and Shield (the shield is currently still in progress). It was all completed within a few afternoons, and I'm even making a second outfit for my daughter - in between toddler wrangling, naptimes, bedtimes, and meals :D

It was quite easy and cheap to make. The main resources that went into making the outfit were; a tea towel, a couple of flannels and some red cotton tape. :D

The cowl is a separate garment to the tabarb so that it can we worn with or without it, and tucked under the tabard or sit ontop, and I added detail to the straps on the back, which are adjustable and there's still plenty of growing room for my little man.

The cowl can be worn down as well as up, and the tabard reversed. You could even add a crown for a 'King Arthur' look.

Here is the Tabard and Cowl tutorial: