Special Snowflake Ugly Sweater

In my family, ugly is an art. From the Ugly Father's day tie tradition to the ugly sweater contests at the family Christmas party, we are well acquainted with the art of ugly. So feeling well prepared I set out to make the most hideous sweater that I could come up with.

In the spirit of Christmas, I used the Snowflake as a guide. Those who make this Sweater will truly have A Special Snowflake to wear to their next Christmas party.

This Ugly Christmas sweater is cheap, costing only about $20 to make, and about 2 days to make. The time put in will be well-rewarded when you see the looks of horror on the faces of the people you meet.

• 3 Sweaters (I got mine from a thrift store for cheap)
• 6 pairs of gloves (Dollar Tree)
• 4 towels
• 3 different colored hand towels
• Tinsel or garland (Dollar Tree)
• String (I used this string from an earlier project found at a thrift store)

Note: If you get your sweaters from a thrift store as I did, then look for the ugliest ones you can find for your base sweater. (Preferably with a hood)

• An assortment of sewing needles
• Embroidery scissors (I did not know what these were called so I looked it up, don't be impressed)
• Scissors
• Chalk (for marking the fabric)

Note: Chalk and Embroidery scissors are not needed, but they are nice to have.

When cutting off the arms of the other 2 sweaters I used the chalk to mark out a triangle. After that, I cut out most of, but not all of the marked area.

Turning the sweater so that the underside was face up I marked another triangle and cut. The final cut looks reminiscent of the triforce, but I found that when adding it to the sweater later, it worked out well.

Remember to keep the rest of the sweater because we use it for stuffing.

Note: Having extra around the arm is not bad, you can always cut it off later.

Now we move on to stuff the arms. Using the towels I first laid out the towel. Next, I folded it in half, and using the sweater arm as a guide, folded it again about 1/4th of the way up. After that I rolled the towel up and stuffed it up the arm, making sure to leave a little sticking out at the end.

Next, I went about adding gloves. Originally, I was going to use all the gloves for sewing on the arms, but this worked out much better.

Pull the gloves over the end of the towel and partly into the sweater sleeve. Then pull the sweater back over the glove.

Once the glove was in place I used a basic hand stitch to sew them together. I went around twice to make sure that the glove would not come off, then I knotted and cut the string with the embroidery scissors.

After I did that I coated the thread with glitter glue to that it would not come undone. Then after that, it was a simple rinse and repeat to get the other 3 arms to this point.

Setting aside the arms, for now, I pulled out a set of gloves and went to work. First, I cut the glove in half-ish, 2 fingers and 3 fingers, and set them aside for a moment. Taking the remains of the sweater I cut 2 rectangles, about 6x4 and 6x6. I cut slits into the pieces so that I could shove them up the fingers.

After shoving the strips in what was left of the gloves, I got ready to stitch them up. I found the starting at the top of the glove and working back to the wrist was the easiest. I sewed one side up first, the bottom, and about 1 inch up the remaining side. Then I shoved the scrap up into the glove and finished off attaching the glove.

Once one side was finished I repeated the same steps on the other side with the other glove. I did not want the thread to come out so I coated the threads again with various colors of glitter glue. Then I did the same to all of the other arms.

Since I had an extra pair of purple gloves I decided to alter the arms based on the color of there gloves. Starting out I set one arm out placing the one triangle under, one over, and one straight down the sweater. I started stitching with the top triangle piece, then moved on to the back, and finally the bottom. I ended up trimming the bottom triangle so that it would look better.

After securing the 3 triangle portions of the arm, I went back and stitched where the inside of the sweater met the edge of the arm. Repeating much the same prosses I attached the lower arm. I ended up nipping off the bottom half of the lower triangle and folding it up into the sweater. The lower arm is a little harder to attach because it overlaps the first arm a bit. Then I attached the other arms on the opposite side.

Note: I used a yarn needle and a towel to make sure I did not stitch the front of the sweater to the back. The yarn needle will not go through the towel so it can help not stitch the two sides together.

Using the various colored hand towels, I cut out the letters "I'm A Spesial SnowFlake". I decided to misspell the word special to give the sweater an extra special touch. Arranging the letters on the Sweater, I found that I had cut the letters a bit too big. Making them fit I started to sew them on. When sewing on the word Flake, I accidentally put the e on before the k, so it went on skiwampus above the a&e.

Note: Making the stitching large makes it uglier, and easer to put on.

Using the garland I cut a couple of pieces and strung the arms together. Placing the connection points right under where the second pare of gloves attach made the arms hang how I liked, but you may find you wish to have multiple strings of garland on your sweater.

To attach the garland, using a yarn needle and threading the garland threw makes it easy to put on.

Note: the arms are a bit cumbersome when going through doorways, so walk sideways.

After finishing the arms and everything else, I decided to add a nice big glitter glue snowflake on the back. After putting on the sweater I thought the only thing that could make this thing uglier is if I added a mask, so wearing a wig backward over my face gave it the final touch I was looking for. Overall I am very proud of how bad this sweater looks, and will look forward to wearing this to the next Christmas party I am attending.

Thanks for reading, and if you have comments or make your own I would love to hear about it in the comments!

Note: looking back threw the pictures I realized my camera's time stamp is off, by a lot, but all of these pictures were taken within the last few days.