Here at Jack Masters, we are always in the Christmas spirit with our British Christmas Jumpers brand. Now you too can get in on the action with our step-by-step guide to creating your very own customised Christmas jumper!
Whether you are a brand owner, designer, a buyer, or from a promotions company, this blog will give you a good idea of the overall process from start to finish, topped with some additional festive tips and tricks to enhance your brand and campaign.
Step 1 - The idea
What better time to create a promotional merchandise campaign, than the season of gifts and giving?
A bespoke, branded Christmas jumper is the ultimate way to express your brand’s unique style and sense of humour and is the perfect way to get your staff and customers all into the Christmas spirit.
Social media competitions, charity fundraisers, PR campaigns, in-store Christmas uniforms, corporate Christmas sweaters, staff Christmas parties, and user generated content campaigns, are just a few of the innovative ways organisations have used our bespoke Christmas jumpers to amplify their campaign.
And with our UK made, eco-friendly recycled yarn Christmas jumpers, you can be sure of that all important sustainable angle that clients and customers value so much these days.
To complement your Christmas jumpers we can also make matching accessories such as beanies, scarves, hot water bottle covers, Santa sacks, stockings, and even unique one off projects.
We recently worked with London’s Natural History Museum on their Christmas campaign, which received UK-wide and international press coverage.
For Christmas jumpers, Jack Masters offers three types of yarn, each with their own benefits.
In recent years we have seen a huge increase in the popularity of our GRS certified (Global Recycling Standards) 100% recycled yarn, which is made from 60% regenerated pre-consumer cotton and 40% recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. This lovely, sustainable yarn knits into warm, long-lasting Christmas jumpers with a soft feel, ensuring a quality garment, whilst also minimising environmental impact.
A popular yarn for luxury Christmas jumpers is merino wool. This super-soft, lightweight-yet-warm yarn feels as good as it looks and is perfect for knitting premium, branded Christmas jumpers that will last.
For those looking for a competitively priced and hardwearing Christmas jumper, acrylic yarn is a long time favourite. Available in a huge array of colours which will suit most branding palettes.
Step 3 - Selecting your knitwear gauge
Once you have decided on the yarn for your Christmas jumper, we move onto choosing the correct knitwear gauge. For this Jack Masters offers two options of knit structure. Our 7 gauge option is a traditional chunky knit, while our 12 gauge is lighter weight and perfect for finer detail.
The amount of detail your branded Christmas jumpers design requires is really important and will often dictate the gauge we can it knit at.
Knitwear gauge refers to the number of needles to one inch on our industrial knitting machines - a good way of understanding gauges is to think of it like this… 12 gauge means 12 needles are used to knit 1 inch of fabric. These needles are very fine and produce a fine gauge knitwear and on our 7 gauge machines 7 needles are used to produce 1 inch of fabric, resulting in a far more ‘chunky’ knit.
Step 4 - Choosing the colours for a knitted jacquard pattern
When designing a Christmas jumper, something to bear in mind is that in a jacquard design (jacquard means a knitted pattern or picture) our knitting machines can only knit a maximum of 3 colours per row of stitches, and a maximum of 5 colours overall – this includes your ‘background’ or ‘base’ colour.
Despite this seemingly limited palette, we are able to produce really interesting and highly detailed knitwear!
Step 5 – Supplying the artwork
Here at our knitwear factory in Leicester, we try to make the process of transforming your ideas and artwork into a physical reality, as simple as possible. We have a selection of bitmap jumper templates for you to customise, or alternatively, our highly experienced knitwear designers can assist you with your design.
We accept Photoshop bitmap files, CAD drawings, spec sheets and sketches. Using these we endeavour to create a Christmas jumper that will match or exceed your expectations.
Step 6 – Approving your final design
Once we have received your design concept our in-house design team will work their magic by producing a beautiful 3D CAD for your consideration. Once approved we will then proceed to a knitted sample.
Even with a simple sketch we can provide your brand with a design and sample within 7 to 14 working days. Production lead times are 6 - 8 weeks for orders placed before September.
We hope that this blog has given you an understanding of how to create your very own Christmas Collection! So, enjoy and get creative! We look forward to making your designs a reality.
Start your design process today by contacting us on +44 (116) 2837300 or sales@jackmasters.co.uk
