How to Make Your Own Christmas Sweater

Creating your own Christmas sweater using a sweater you already own could save a lot of waste and be a fun creative project! Call it upcycling or customising, but either way, you can refresh a sweater you might be tired of rather than buying new.

 
Christmas sweater ideas by Collingwood-Norris

Snowflakes, Christmas trees and stars, all ideas for creating your own Christmas sweater

 

Why you shouldn’t buy a new Christmas Sweater

Christmas sweaters are one of the many seasonal items of clothing that cause huge amounts of clothing waste ever year. People buy them, wear them a few times at most and then bin them. They’re often made with poor quality, synthetic materials.

1 in 3 under 30s buy a new Xmas jumper each year (according to Hubbub)

1 in 4 Christmas sweaters will be thrown out after one season or never worn again.

In the last few years, there have been articles with headlines like “Christmas jumper craze ‘bad for environment’, ‘Christmas sweaters are adding to global plastic pollution’ and

‘For the love of god, don’t buy that ugly Christmas sweater’

Turn an old sweater into. a Christmas sweater!

Instead of buying new, I can help you update a sweater you already own, and you can turn it into a festive design. Or just give it a new lease of life with any theme or design you like! This is really about customising something so you love it again, and it doesn’t have to be Christmassy if Christmas sweaters aren’t your thing.

This doesn’t have to be a sweater that has holes, in fact I’m not going to focus on how to fix the holes, because I already have a lot of tutorials to help you with that.

To create your own Christmas sweater, you just need an old sweater you are happy to decorate. If you don’t have an old sweater you are willing to work on or think is suitable, have a look in charity shops, ebay or vinted, and you could find a second hand sweater that way.

7 tips for creating your own Christmas sweater:

  • Start with a plain coloured sweater to work onto. It would have a textured pattern like a cable, but I think it will be easier to create your own design on a plain coloured background.

 
Embroider your own christmas sweater by Collingwood-Norris

The snowflake on the left is in cotton, and the other two are a silk/ mohair mix

 
  • Find colours and yarns that work together and provide variety. Choose a colour palette- this is going to depend slightly on your sweater and what colour that is. If you’re going for festive, then are you choosing reds, greens and gold? Or blues, whites and silver? Or silver gold and bronze perhaps? If you don’t want to add metallic threads or sparkly threads into your sweater (they’ll likely contain a high percentage of something plastic, and not all metallic yarns can be washed) then what will you use instead? A warm yellow for gold- maybe in a mercerised cotton or silk to catch the light? Pale grey for silver, or white?

  • Choosing some different types of yarns can add interest. Wool will provide a matt look, silk or mercerised cotton will catch the light and mohair can be brushed to be fluffy for example.

  • Look for motifs you like and find inspiration. Do you want to try and create snowflakes? Or holly and berries? Snowmen? Reindeer? Find some examples of things you like to take inspiration from (and if this inspiration is other sweaters or textiles, you can take inspiration from other people’s work, but not copy it- that is never ok).

 
How to upcycle your own christmas sweater by Collingwood-Norris

Try sketching out some rough ideas to plot where you want your festive decorations/ motifs to go.

 
  • Think about where you want your pattern/ decoration to be. Across the front in a band? Around the neckline? Scattered all over? Try sketching out some rough ideas, and then you can roughly plot where you want your decorations to go. I suggest tacking lines, or using sticky dots or safety pins to mark out where you would like your design features to be. Then try on the sweater to make sure the placement looks good when it’s on you!

  • Sometimes, less is more. It can be very easy to add too much and make a design cover complicated. You may find that just adding a few carefully considered decorations/ motifs are enough.  

  • Create something you will be happy to wear again and again! Personally I would opt for more classic motifs that won’t look like a novelty sweater. Scattered snowflakes, berries and leaves or little stars for example rather than a scene of snowmen or a huge reindeer face.

Simple Embroidery Stitches for Snowflakes and Festive Motifs

Embroidery stitches and swiss darning will both be great techniques to use for creating your own Christmas sweater using a sweater you already own. Or for just customising a sweater you want to feel excited about again. I’ve made all these snowflakes up as I’ve stitched- non of them are perfectly even, but I don’t think that matters very much. Have fun creating your own!

 
Embroidered snowflake by Collingwood-Norris

Embroidered snowflake using fly stitch and straight stitch

 

Fly stitch is great for snowflakes, maybe with some straight stitch. Fly stitch create a V shape or a Y shape, depending on how you finish it, so I’ve found it’s really almost all I need for snowflakes.

You could use daisy stitch if you have a small hole, and keep the hole as the centre of the snowflake. I’ve created one snowflakes example that’s entirely made up of daisy stitch and chain stitch, with a small hole at the centre.

Embroidered snowflake with small hole in the centre, using daisy stitch and chain stitch.

Embroidered snowflake designs by Collingwood-Norris.

French knots (top half) and individual swiss darned stitches (bottom half) make great tiny snowflakes or tiny stars- a great filler

French knots are great for adding to snowflakes, or for dotting about as little ‘stars’ or flakes of snow.

Swiss darning is also great for customising sweaters. Get some knit graph paper (with landscape rectangles instead of squares) and try out your ideas on there first.

I’ve used swiss darning for a snowflake, and also for trying out Christmas trees. It’s also great if used sparingly as individual stitches, for flakes of snow.

 
Create your own Christmas Sweater by Collingwood-Norris

Use knit graph paper to plan your designs and festive motifs

 

Straight Stitch- great for just about everything!

I love straight stitch- it’s so easy and you can do anything with it. I love it for drawing with stitch, and I’ve used it in some of the snowflakes and the simple small snowflakes/ stars. I only tried one Christmas tree with straight stitch, but it’s my favourite as it has more texture than the swiss darned ones. I haven’t had time to develop it more, but I think it is has a lot of potential, especially if it was done on a bigger scale in much thicker yarn.

Christmas tree embroidery ideas for Christmas sweaters by Collingwood-Norris

Christmas Tree embroideries, largely using swiss darning. These are all experiments! The top right is sraight stitch, and I think this has a lot of potential.

Simple embroidered stars by Collingwood-Norris

Straight stitch snowflakes or stars (yarn choice might decide which) with some french knots

Snowflake and star ideas for creating your own christmas sweater by Collingwood-Norris

The large snowflake is a mix of straight stitch, fly stitch and daisy stitch. The small stars/ snowflakes (again yarn choice might be the decider) are daisy stitch.

There are so many ways you could customise a sweater to make it festive, using just a few simple stitches. If you have a go, I’d love to seethe results! The main thing is to have fun with it, and use yarns, colours and motifs you like!

If you would like instructions for the stitches I’ve used, then my book ‘Visible Creative Mending for Knitwear’ has step by step instructions for them all. I also send out some tips and occasional instructions for things like this in my newsletter- you can sign up below (scroll down).