Lots and lots of tiny pattern pieces, and I still have to cut out their Santa hats.
When my part-time retail gig put up the “Black Friday Ugly Holiday Sweater Contest” sign by the time clock, I realized three things:
- I refuse to pay money (even if it is only $3 at the local Goodwill store) for an ugly sweater I will wear only once a year. Particularly since, if it was an ugly sweater anyone wanted to wear, it wouldn’t be in a Goodwill store in the first place.
- I’m an artist. I can make my own holiday sweater.
- If I’m making a holiday sweater, it will have dinosaurs in Santa hats on it.
DIY Dinos in Santa Hats Holiday Sweater
Step 1: Find a red cardigan at a thrift shop that you are willing to wear.
Step 2: Buy a bunch of felt squares in different colors – a number of greens and some other likely dinosaur colors, plus red and white for the Santa hats.
Step 3: Make an attempt to draw dinosaurs and remember that you are a far better artist in 3D than you are in 2D.
Step 4: Go online (pinterest is my friend!) and find some silhouettes of dinosaurs to use.
Step 5: Print out the enlarged silhouettes and subdivide them into pattern pieces: bodies, legs on top of the body piece, legs underneath the body piece, Stegosaurus plates, Triceratops head and frill, etc. Design appropriately goofy Santa hats for each dino.
Here’s the Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus with their pattern pieces sketched in.
Step 6: Cut out lots and lots of tiny pattern pieces.
Step 7: Take a break and have some cookies and hot chocolate (or breakfast if it is the next morning and you are writing a blog post).
Step 8: Lay the pieces out over the original silhouette to line them up correctly. Glue in place. UPDATE: The glue did not work very well. I did the first one and left it for several hours only come back to find that it had dried with several ugly white patches. I ended up hand sewing all the appliques together.
Step 9: If you don’t care about reusing the sweater, glue the dinos in place on it. Otherwise, spend a bunch of time sewing your felt dinosaurs onto the sweater.
Step 10: Have some more cookies, then wear your sweater out to great acclaim.
I am currently almost done with step 6, but obviously skipped ahead to step 7 to eat breakfast and type this up. Pictures of the finished masterpiece will be forthcoming, although now I’m thinking I’m going to want to add a palm tree for the Apatosaurus to eat and a volcano or two to round out the panorama on the back of the sweater. It may not be completely finished by the time I have to work on Black Friday afternoon, but I’ve got the entire month of December to swan around wearing it.
Happy (U.S.) Thanksgiving from me and all the dinos!
UPDATE #2: Here is a post with pictures of the (almost) finished sweater. I ended up adding a lot of scenery to the panorama on the back because the dinos looked goofy just hanging out on their own.