DIY Christmas Sweater

Who doesn’t love a good Christmas sweater?! When I was younger, I put my degree in Costume Design to good use and created an EPIC ugly Christmas sweater for a party that my friends and I used to have yearly. This is a project I did last year but never got around to sharing it so I thought this year is as good as any! I did this project in one afternoon, it is kind of involved with all the cutting and gluing but I put on a good audiobook and went to town. This sweater turned out better than what I imagined and I will be rocking it again this year!

Here’s what you’ll need:

A sweater, solid color is preferred (I got mine from Value Village)
Felt sheets in 3 different greens
Small red felt balls
A gift bow
Hot Glue/Hot Glue Gun

Decide on the diameter width you want of the outer circle of your wreath, I used one of my large mixing bowls and turned it upside down for this. Place the template or bowl on the sweater where you’d like your wreath to go and trace it onto the sweater.

2. For the inner ring I found that putting one of our cereal bowls upside down in the middle allowed for 2 1/2″ for my wreath. Trace your inner circle onto the sweater.

3. I created a template for my leaves just by tracing a teardrop shape onto some paper and then I duplicating it a few times so I wasn’t having to move it around each time to cut out the leaves. Pin the templates to the felt squares and cut out leaves in each color, as many as you think you’ll need. I had a ton left over but I would rather have too many than have to go back and cut more.

4. Starting at the outer ring, hot glue one of your felt leaves in whichever direction you’d like them to face. ***Important*** When gluing this first row of leaves be sure to only glue the bottom half of the leaf so that you can lift up the top to overlap the last row of leaves for a more realistic and complete look. Then repeat alternating the different color leaves across the width of your wreath to the inner circle. With my template, I was able to fit 4 or 5 leaves across. For the next row, I overlapped the leaves on top of the ones in the previous row and flared out the very outer and very inner leaves slightly. Repeat until your wreath is filled!

5. Once the wreath is filled, hot glue the little red felt dots randomly on different parts of the wreath so they look like little berries! To finish off the sweater, hot glue the bow to the bottom or the top of the wreath, whichever you prefer!