DIY Christmas Jumper with Felt Pug Motif

You know I love a crafty competition and when I was invited to take part in the Turtle Mat Thrifty Christmas Jumper Challenge I knew it was right up my street, they sent me a lovely cream jumper and gave me £5 to spend on making it into a Christmas special! As it happens, it’s Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day tomorrow so I’m just in time!

I wanted to make something a bit out of the ordinary rather than stick to a traditional theme plus I love Pugs (and hope that Andrea wins the X Factor this weekend) so decided to combine the two! Here’s the tutorial for making your own Bah Humpug DIY Christmas Jumper.

You will need:

6 sheets of felt (dark brown, light brown, white, black, green and red)
Glue
Thread
Wool for pompom (optional)

1. I started by drawing out my pug template, it took a while to get the sizes right so I’ve included a printable template for you. Cut out the shapes and then use this to cut the various pieces out of the felt.

2. Put the letters to one side and layer up the pug’s face until everything is in the right position and then use the glue to stick into place. You can use fabric glue or normal PVA.

3. Place your pug on the centre front of the jumper and pin into position. Fold the tip of the hat over and place the point to one side so you get the bend. You can just glue the pug into place but I also put some stitches around the face just to be doubly sure. You only need to use tiny stitches so they aren’t visible. Make sure you put some paper inside the jumper when you’re glueing so you don’t stick the front to the back by accident!

4. Lay out the lettering and glue into place.

5. If you don’t have any spare wool you can cut the pompom for the hat out of white felt, I’ve included a shape for this on the template. I just liked the idea of having something in relief and had some leftover wool from another project – pompoms are a great way to use up oddments! I used a pompom maker from Hobbycraft but you can also use a fork or cut circles from card for the same result.