Knight Hoodie + Shield Tutorial

I am so excited to participate in the pattern tour for this amazing Knight Hoodie by Charming Doodle!  It’s been so exciting seeing all the other versions.

Arden is definitely a girly girl and loves to dress up in princess gowns with tiara and all, but she has an equal opportunity imagination.  She also likes to wear her minion costume, or even more comically, Hadley’s Cheese Mouse costume from this year’s Halloween.  It was a tight fit in length on Hadley and on Arden, let’s just say she’s not too concerned with comfort in her southern region or she wouldn’t keep cramming herself into it!

Elisa has offered a special discount for A Jennuine Life readers, just enter Jennuine where it asks for a coupon code at Charming Doodle and you’ll get this great pattern for only $10!

When I invited Arden to walk to a nearby church with these great Midieval-esque doors, she quickly got into the role of knight.  Sir Arden was keen to protect the beautiful princess just inside the doors.

How fun is the hood with the visor, and the zippered helmet piece covering her mouth?  As a bonus, it’s really warm all zipped up like that, which was a good thing since it was about 20 degrees and windy when we held our little photo shoot!  I didn’t mean to take photos in full sun, but that was the time that worked best for us and the helmet with visor makes a nice shade.

The children’s pattern is for sizes 2T through 10 – that’s a huge range of sizes!  Plus, Elisa is working on an adult pattern so your entire family could be knights together!  I’ll admit that I put my head inside the hood of the size 5 I made for Arden and zipped it up so I could try it out – so fun!

The pattern went together perfectly and was very easy to follow; all those great armor details hardly add any complication to the base hoodie.  Elisa has great step by step photos to walk you through construction, and the knight graphics throughout the pattern are such a fun and inspiring detail.

I used grey sweatshirt fleece and knit ribbing as the pattern indicated.  I had grand plans to use silver fabric paint on the armor pieces to make them look like hammered metal, but no dice.  The sweatshirt fleece would not accept my stamping no matter how I tried.  Instead, I used silver metallic thread to outline the armor pieces.  Much more subtle, but it still gave them some nice accent.

Defending the castle is tough work – a girl’s gotta take a break!

I made a simple shield to go with Arden’s cool Knight Hoodie, and wrote a tutorial so you can make one for your knight as well!  You’ll never guess what I used to give the shield some dimension but I could still sew through…

1. Cut two pieces of material to 5.5″ x 13″.  I used sweatshirt fleece leftover from the hoodie and some red pleather I had on hand.
2. Sew together along the long edge with a 1/4″ seam allowance.
3. Cut into two pieces at 5.5″ so you now have one piece measuring 10″ x 5.5″ and another measuring 10.5″ x 7.5″
4. Rotate 180° and sew together with a 1/4″ seam allowance, taking car to match the center seam.
5. Fold the shield piece in half lengthwise and cut a curve from the bottom center and ending about 1.5″ below the seam on the side.
6. Open the shield.  If you want to add topstitching or any other sewn details to the shield, add them now.
   
7. Cut another piece of fabric larger than the shield.  I used some upholstery fabric I had on hand from another project.  Sew lengths of elastic in place I eyeballed the placement and sewed them in place with a box and X stitching pattern.
8. With right sides together, sew the front and back pieces together, leaving about a 5″ opening at the top.
9. Here’s the fun part:  I normally use rigid cutting mats for hat brims and projects needing a really stiff piece.  I wasn’t able to find one of those cutting boards so I scouted around and found a foam place mat instead.
10. Trim the place mat to just smaller than the shield dimensions.
11. Roll the place mat into a tube and slide inside the opening.
12. Tuck in the edges and top stitch around the shield.  The foam place mat was very easy to stitch through; I’ll be adding this to my arsenal of materials for this type of project!