DIY: The Tacky Christmas Sweater

One out of the four Christmas trees in my living room is currently a little less decorated. For a good cause. We were having our First Annual Tacky Christmas Sweater Day at school. And I was not to be out-tackified.

 I think hubs thought I'd gone mad, as it was approaching bedtime (which is an embarrassing 9 pm) when I started de-garlanding our tree. 

"Why are you taking down the tree?" he asked.  

I responded with a frantic, "I'm not taking down the tree, I'm making a Tacky Christmas Sweater with the tree because tomorrow is Tacky Christmas Sweater Day and I don't have one to wear!"

Nodding his head as if that explained everything (which it would if you knew me), "Oh, okay. I'm going to bed."

My DIY Supplies: sweater: thrifted leopard-print sweater; other stuff: Target: garland, fishnets, tights and random $1 ornaments that didn't make the cut

I don't know what "I'm going to bed" stands for in your house, but in my house it's kind of like a duck-and-cover technique. As in, "I just don't think I'm up for this kind of crazy, I'm callin' it a night."

When you make your own Tacky Sweater, don't let the garland just run freely under the needle as shown above. Show that garland who's boss by holding it in place as the photo below.

Because I had mucho cleaning to do in preparation for hub's big Second Annual Gingerbread House Competition and Work Christmas Party (aka SAGHCWCP), I didn't have much time to spare working on this sweater. Thankfully it was a 15 minute DIY which is nothing short of a Christmas Miracle for this Pokey Little Puppy.

Care to make one of these Tacky Lil Numbers? Easy. Just do the following:

1. Set your machine to the zigzag stitch. I began with the bottom edge of the cardigan.
2. It really helps to use your fingers to separate the garland at the middle as you sew. I felt certain that I'd never find a silver pin again in all that silvery garland, so I did not pin that mess down. I just went at it.
3. Be prepared to vacuum up a lot of garland shreds as the needle tends to chew threw the garland.
4. Make sure to really back stitch at the beginning and end several times. This will prevent the garland from falling out all day long. I did this and I still lost garland. I felt I was leaving a trail of Christmas where ever I went.

This sweater seemed to be a big hit with the kids and my coworkers. Folks kept dropping by my room all day long saying, "I was told I had to come see The Sweater."

Because my school is full of wonderfully fun folk, I wanted to create some awards for their taking part in our First Annual Tacky Christmas Sweater Day. We met for a hot minute after school to snap a year-book-worthy group photo and pass out these cheesey awards I created on the fly. Because of their NC-17 nature, we waited until the little ones were out of the building.

I paired my tacky sweater with my double pairing of Target tights (guess who has a serious fishnets-over-tights addiction?), my black Anthro belt, a vintage dress, a wee little red bow and a giant hair bow.

It was funny how this total tack-tastic package was like a Double Punch: first the Pow! from the Glittery-Garland-Gawdiness and then the Bam! of the Bizarro Bow Bun. I actually had to demo this hair how-to to about a dozen of my little girls. They were fascinated. Special thanks to Twila Jean for the super simple youtube tutorial!

And there you have it, kids. May the tackiness be with you this holiday season.