What Cat Wore | DIY Christmas Jumper

 

If you follow me on any social media, you might already know that a few weeks ago, I attended John Lewis's Christmas Craft event in London which a bunch of bloggers and decorated a range of John Lewis's Christmas jumpers! It was lots of fun decorating jumpers, meeting new bloggers and generally getting crafty especially for the Christmas season. I absolutely love my new DIYed Christmas jumper and I thought I would take the opportunity to share it with you and hopefully inspire you to decorate your own jumpers for Christmas Jumper Day, this Friday the 16th December!

 

Jumper - John Lewis * | Jeans - River Island | Boots - Brantano * | Stocking (below) - John Lewis

 

As you can see my jumper of choice was this monochrome striped jumper featuring John Lewis's current Christmas advert star, Buster the Boxer. I picked this prior to the event and already thought of how I could decorate it, pending on what was available to do so. My initial idea was to give him a Santa hat and pop a bow around his neck, but I had a new idea suddenly popped into my head in what must have been seconds before getting started on the jumper and I went with that one instead. I decided to make Buster look like a reindeer!

 

We had the most amazing and huge range of crafty things to use which is all available from John Lewis's haberdashery range including felt, wool, the prettiest glittery string, Christmassy fabrics and lots more. With my new idea in mind, I dived straight in getting everything I needed to get started. I was also so inspired by Zoe from Ladybird Likes to add some elbow patches to my jumper too after seeing her fox jumper made all Christmassy with some cute elbow patches. The lovely Zoe was there inspiring us with ideas and helping us out to create the awesome jumpers we left with! You should totally check her out here.

 

 

Making the jumper was pretty simple really. I say this knowing a lot of people are going to say something like "Oh! That's easy for you to say!" or "I bet it was easy for a crafty person like you". But honestly, it's all for fun and I just made sure I didn't worry too much about it and got a little inspiration from the magical world of Pinterest too. I went simple too to avoid any mishaps. No need for anything extravagant!

So to make Buster all Christmassy and more like a cute reindeer, I started by cutting out two antler shaped pieces of felt and gluing them next to Buster's ears. I also made it a little bit more festive with some gold string to outline the antlers which added a bit of sparkle to the jumper too!. For the adorable reindeer nose I made a big red pom-pom using one of those amazing pom-pom making contraptions which I must now get for future DIYs! I'm thinking pom-pom pillows and all sorts.... Anyway, I finally cut out some oval pieces of that pretty cream and gold starry fabric for the elbow patches and roughly measured out how many stripes up it would go before I needed to glue it on with a bit of fabric glue. They are quite accurate for an estimate so I was pretty pleased with myself but I'm still yet to sew this up properly to make sure it stays put. And that was it! A Christmas Jumper completed and ready for Christmas Jumper Day and all the festive Christmas things inbetween!

 

We also had the opportunity to decorate a stocking which I added a few festive ribbons to, to jazz it up a little bit. By this point I think my inspiration was all used up on creating the jumper that I hadn't any left for the stocking! I like it though, it's simple and seasonal.

And that was it! It was such a fun evening, I have to say. These are the best sort of blogger events. It was lovely to meet all the bloggers too, especially the ones I'd known and chatted with on Twitter but never met. Overall, went home pretty chuffed with my finished jumper and stocking and stuffed on mini Crab Brulees and mince pies! I'd like to finally thank John Lewis for inviting me out to come and have a lovely crafty evening with you and I hope that I've inspired maybe even just one of you to DIY a Christmas Jumper for Christmas Jumper Day on Friday 16th December ♥

 

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