The great thing about DIY’ing one of these jumpers is that if you haven’t found one that speaks to you in the shops (we understand if I heart NYC’s just not for you) you can customise your knit to say anything you ruddy well like! Add you’re fave phrase, quote or lyric, the possibilities are endless.
Sassy sayings aren’t going anywhere, with Bella Freud on the chest of every hot fashion IT girl. Etre Cecile, Possecul and Bow and Drapealso have some great pieces if witty sayings are your thang.
You’ll Need
A knitted jumper.** **We used this jumper from ASOS, can’t get enough of the autumnal mustard shade.
A computer and printer
How to
Choose your slogan, we went with ‘Bills Bills Bills’ (a bit of old school Destinys Child for you there) We also toyed with ‘No Scrubs’ but as we said, the world is your slogan oyster.
Position your jumper on a flat surface to work on. If you’re jumper like ours is ribbed, pop it on for 5 minutes or give it a gentle stretch, to reveal its true-to-wear shape, this will ensure we attach the sequins where they will lay whilst worn.
Feel free to freestyle it if you feel, but we created a template by writing our phrase on a landscape Word document, in a calligraphy font, (We used a tree trial of ‘Manus’ from www.dafont.com) and printing a few times in different sizes until we were happy with the size for our jumper. (Use a draft setting whilst printing to save ink!) We settled on ‘Bills Bills’ in font size 150 and the final ‘Bills’ in size 200.
Cut out the black text of your phrase, this will leave you with a template to trace with your sequins.
You can arrange your phrase to read in any format that you like; you could have the phrase reading from the left to the right side, or have it going down vertically, like ours.
Place your template down and Sellotape the corners so it stays in place.
Lightly trace in the centre of your cut out word with a biro or Sharpie pen, to create a guide of where to glue your sequins.
Using fabric glue very sparingly, follow the pen guidelines with glue.
Starting with the end of the sequin trim at the top of the letter of your first word, follow the glue around the word, and lightly press your sequin trim down so it sticks. Glueing the trim down first allows us to have it partly secured in place, making sewing the sequins to further secure much easier.
With some letters, like the top of the L’s you will need to cut the sequin trim and begin the next letter with the new end of the sequins.
Glue the trim all the way around each letter, and finish by cutting after the last sequins you need, this will leave the trim with an open end, ensure it is glued down, we will further secure this by sewing later.
Repeat the above process, tracing your template, gluing around each letter, and tracing with the sequin trim.
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Now, threading our needle and starting from the inside of the jumper, thread through the hole of the first sequin on the first word, and threading in and out, follow the sequins to each letter, securing in place.
Finish off on the inside of the jumper, knotting the thread, and begin sewing the sequins of the remaining words.
Once all your sequins are sewed in place, voila, you’re done!
Wear your new power sweater with a midi skirt and boots, the perfect winter outfit.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.