Make Your Own Ugly Christmas Sweater

DIY Ugly Christmas Sweater

I am chuckling under my breath as I type this because it is honestly SUCH an easy, fun project for us last night! Unless you’ve been living in a pop-culture void, you know that ugly Christmas sweaters are ALL the rage. Gone are the days of searching the thrift store racks for something to wear… nowadays places like Michaels and The Home Depot sell them for $19.99. Well… Eleanor has an ugly sweater day at school and I decided it might be fun for us to make our own! She was grinning EAR to EAR when we finished, and I had to write up a quick post about it for you all. (Don’t tell Eleanor that I let Louisa model her sweater today…) We used basically anything we had on hand: felt, pom poms, ribbon, buttons. (I’ll put a materials list at the end of this post with the exact supplies we used…) We used a sweatshirt I found at the thrift store.

Step 1: Sketch out your design.

I told Eleanor that she needed to keep her design to the center of the sweatshirt and I suggested she use smaller pieces of felt since I think they attach a little easier than a giant piece.

Step 2: Cut out shapes.

She cut out all the shapes and lay them onto the sweatshirt where she wanted them.

Step 3. Glue

I know there’s fabric glue that would have worked just as well, but I just grabbed our hot glue gun since it was 5:00 at night and I didn’t want to go to the store. This will probably not wash very easily, but… I also don’t think it will be worn very often…

Step 4. Glitter

I happened to have a fabric glue/ glitter combo in my stash, so we went back and added that. I probably wouldn’t suggest glitter unless it’s intended for fabric because… it’s stupid messy.

And that’s it! I love the idea of grabbing some cheapo sweatshirts for the family and letting everyone decorate their own! You could precut the felt for smaller kids and let them arrange it into a fun pattern. Older kids would have a blast just working with a variety of materials! Head over to my HOLIDAY page to see other Christmas projects I’ve posted about on the blog!

My Materials:

• Affiliate links included!
• Felt
• Fabric Glitter
• Pom Poms
• Felt Star (Similar linked here)
• mini bells
• Glue gun