Creating Sweaters for the Steve Carell Xfinity 2020 “The Greatest Gift” Commercial

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I rarely know much about the projects I am hired to create, but it’s always a fun surprise to see them on the screen in their finished form!

December 8, 2020

I embellished two sweaters for the commercial - they can be briefly seen at these timestamps:
Christmas Tree sweater 1:33
Snowman sweater 1:52

I always become excited when I am contacted by someone that I haven’t worked with yet. Costume designer Nancy Bernal reached out to me about creating some holiday sweaters for a commercial she was working on. But this project was a bit different. There wasn’t time to knit sweaters, instead she was looking for some embellished “ugly” Christmas sweaters.

“Auntie’s Cheek Squeezes” gift

Phinny is a very uptight supervisor!

When these projects come to me, I don’t ask a lot of questions - aside from the ones that I really need answers to. I need to know sizes, timelines, and details about their vision, but I don’t ask what the commercial/film/TV show is going to be. Sometimes I am given that information and sometimes I am not. It was an awesome surprise when I saw the finished commercial and it was starring one of my acting favorites, Steve Carell, as Santa Clause.

The sweaters only make a brief appearance, but it was still a really fun project to work on. As always, the timeline was short, but I honestly work better when under tight deadlines. My favorite part about the project was having the opportunity to go to some craft stores and purchase the goodies needed to make a project like this. Felt, ribbon, shiny stars, tiny ornaments, bows, and gold thread were all on my shopping list!

The Christmas Tree Sweater

I was in Las Vegas at the time and I seem to recall that I had two days to create two sweaters. They were long days and I had a lot of glitter around our RV by the end of it, but I was in heaven! I kicked Garner out to the casinos so that I could make a mess and Phinny was nearby supervising the entire project very closely.

Growing up, I was always creating projects like this. I loved embellishing and making things out of anything I could talk my mom into buying me from the craft store. While I was working on this project, I texted my parents and told them, “I bet you never thought all that time spent and money spent at the craft store would become useful in my future career!” Learning all the skills of sewing, cutting out fabric, proper glue for the project, and creating embellishment stitches became very useful during this project.

For the Christmas Tree Sweater, I created a crochet trim around the neck and cuffs, per Ms. Bernal’s vision. I had seen this done on sweaters before, but hadn’t actually ever done it myself. I first created a row of slipped stitches and then came back over them in a picot stitch. The first time I did it, my slip stitches were too tight, so I had to rip back and redo. The cuffs went much faster now that I had the groove and tension down.

“Adopt a Furry Friend Friend” gift

The Snowman Sweater

The Snowman Sweater had a blanket stitch embellishment around the collar, cuffs, and hem. Using furry fabric to create the snowman was a lot of fun (but made a mess when it was cut!). I had a little bit of Madelinetosh “Home” yarn in color Tart leftover to make his knit scarf.

Once I was done with the two sweaters, I carefully packaged them up and called upon Garner to come home and run them to FedEx for me. He is a great mail runner after finishing a project that took every bit of energy out of me!

I believe that was on a Saturday. On Sunday morning, I received a message that they needed one more of the Christmas tree sweaters for a stunt double. So back at it I went! Monday morning that was shipped out first thing!

This was a really fun project and Nancy Bernal and her team were a dream to work with.

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