We bet you’re dying to know what’s new in the world of sweater fashion, aren’t you? Well wait no more, next season it’s all going to be about chic colour blocking and patchwork pieces. Just take a look at the new season pieces from designers Roksanda Ilincic), Bottega Veneta, Jil Sander and Fendi) (to name but a few). We also spotted that the Prabal Gurung Pre Fall collection, that has literally just dropped, features a patchwork coloured knit….you can’t get much more on trend than that.
We decided to make the most of this trend to save our Christmas jumper from a life in a drawer after December. Every year we swear we won’t buy another, but then, oh wait, it has a Pug on it…bought! And our old jumper gathers dust.
Most jumpers have some sort of festive figure/motif/quote ‘Jingle my bell!’ (Stop it.) In the centre of the knit (that by the way you wouldn’t be seen dead in anything similar to the other 11 months of the year.) Step forward the patchwork knit to cover a multitude of festive jumper sins.
Obviously this isn’t foolproof if your jumper doesn’t have a motif in the middle, but is covered front, back and sides with Christmas puddings. If you still want rid, may we suggest a little DIY)to turn it into a pair (or a few pairs) of Christmas Socks, or festive hand warmers? A little gift from you to you for next season?
You’ll need
A Christmas jumpersto re-vamp. We used a Christmas Tree Jumper from Dorothy Perkins,
And a grey Penguin knit from Apricot at New Look)
You will need one extra jumper to cover the Christmas motifs, we used a Ski style jumper that had been collecting dust in our wardrobe, as well as a vintage cable knit.
We realise we’ve used four jumpers here, but that’s for maximum patchwork effect and because we suffer from seasonal boredom of our knitwear, hence DIYing them for the new season. But one Christmas and one non Christmas jumper would also do the trick using the same patchwork technique.
A sewing machine (hand sewing is possible but for a neat finish a machine is best)
Thread (we used a shimmery gold thread throughout)
A large piece of paper for the jumper’s template (we suggest using a cheap roll of wrapping paper)
A pen
How to
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Choose which of your jumpers will be the ‘base’ for the DIY, that you will attach the other pieces too. We decided to DIY the front and sleeves of our Navy jumper in patchwork, but leave the back of the jumper plain.
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On a large (A1 ideally) piece of plain paper, (tip use a roll of wrapping paper instead of forking out for expensive paper) trace around your jumper, don’t trace it too tightly, it’s better if you overestimate the size slightly.
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Looking at your other jumper(s) work out what type of a pattern you’d like using patchwork, remember you will be cutting out any motifs on the jumper. For our jumper, the tree was in the centre, so we made sure to cover that with a large piece of fabric.
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Plot out your pattern with a pen, writing the colour of the jumper in the space of the patch. We used square/triangle like shapes to fill our knit.
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You may want to trace the plot of this template again, so you can have a complete ‘blueprint’ of the jumper, as we are now going cut out all the individual sections to use as pattern pieces. If you have a bad memory (like us) another template will help you remember where each piece goes!
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Once you’ve cut out all your individual pieces of paper templates, place each one upon the jumper of choice, and cut around, be sure to leave 2 inches of seam allowance around the edge, you’ll need this when you attach the pieces, and it’s much better to have too much fabric than too little!
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Once you have all your pieces cut out, place them back on top of the original jumper, we even used the rounded neck of a different jumper, as well as a different hem and sleeves. Ensure these match up as best as possible, but the good thing with this is the pattern can be a little bit abstract.
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As we said earlier, we decided to cut the bottom of the sleeves off the original jumper, but applique (the fancy word for sew/attach straight on top of) the rest of the sections on.
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Start with the sleeves, wherever you want the new sleeve to lie, cut off the original sleeve PLUS two inches for seam allowance.
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Create a hem for the cut sleeve by folding over 1 1Ž2 inches into the inside of the jumper, pin it down in place, and using a straight stitch on your sewing machine, sew around the edge of the jumper until a hem is created.
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Now to attach the ‘new’ sleeve cuff, with your desired piece of fabric, place the new cuff’s 2 inches of extra seam allowance you left inside the cuff, pin (make sure to leave a gap for the arm, don’t sew it together!!) all the way around, and stretching the cuff around your sewing machine, sew again over the line of the old cuffs hem. This will attach the two neatly and ensure they are the correct sleeve length.
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Repeat this step for the other arm’s cuff, we made our second cuff more of a diagonal cut, but followed the same steps.
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Now for the bottom hem of the jumper, again we cut off the original navy jumper, measuring 5 inches up from the hem for our line. We again left 2 inches of seam allowance, folded this over, pinned it all the way around and sewed it up with a straight stitch.
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For all the other pieces of fabric, as you aren’t going to be cutting into the jumper and covering the raw edges, we will need to create a hem on each side.
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We left the previous seam allowance around the outside so that for this stage, you could fold over the edges 1 1Ž2 - 2 inches, pin in place, and on your machine, sew a straight stitch all the way around each edge until the raw edges are covered.
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Now to applique these onto the jumper; pin the pieces in place, (we started with the largest piece first and worked our way to the smallest) and remember you don’t have to stick exactly to your original plan, our jumper altered slightly along the way.
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Stitch around each piece of fabric in a straight line around each edge, we know this leaves a small visible stitch, but we think it makes a nice feature, especially if you choose a shimmery thread like we did.
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We used the same technique to stitch the new collar on the jumper, stitching around the edge until the collar was attached.
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If you’re having trouble fitting the thick knit into the sewing machine, it is possible, (though more time consuming) to hand stitch the pieces to the jumper.
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Once you’ve stitched each piece of patchwork onto your knit, and all signs of Christmas have been covered, you’re done!
The leftovers
But wait, we hear you ask, what do I do with my Christmas tree, Penguin and leftover knitted fabric?
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We cut out our festive motifs out as close to the edge and neatly as possible. We then used the biggest piece of fabric we had left (in our case the cable knit) and used it to make a hot water bottle cover!
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Simply trace a hot water bottle, leaving 1 12 inches around the edge for seam allowance, and an extra 2 inches at the top.
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Turn the fabric inside out, sew around with a straight stitch, leaving 12 inch at the edge (making it a little bigger will allow you to get the bottle in and out if needed.)
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At the top, we folded down the seams, sewed them in place so it was neat, as tied the top with some navy ribbon.
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We hand sewed our Penguin motif on the front, and tree on the back and voila! A festive hot water bottle bonus DIY for all!
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.