Pompom Christmas Wreath – a Family Make

I suppose it all started when I bought some pompom makers and the boys wanted to try them. And of course there was that walk along the river when my husband absent-mindedly made a wreath of the weeping willow branches we found on the ground. That wreath became the Halloween wreath and  now it is the Christmas wreath! I think this has strong recycling credentials.

You start with a round wreath-shaped object. It could be K’Nex pieces, wire hangers or even a shop-bought wreath form. If you are using a thin frame, you will need to cover it in some form of wadding to add girth. I used the left-over wadding from the round floor cushion but wrapping shopping bags around would do the trick too. It doesn’t have to look pretty or neat, it just serves to bulk up your wreath.

Then the fun begins. You make a LOT of pompoms in colours to match your Christmas style. For me, it’s always green, red and white and to add a bit of a sparkle, gold. But pompoms look good in any colour combination as they are cheerful. I’ve seen multi-coloured ones, purple-hued, black and gold – there is no limit.

With husband and younger son, the pompom manufacturing began. None of our scissors are very sharp so I was sawing rather than cutting through the yarn but in the end, we got there. I have three sizes of pompom maker and we used all three with 100g of DK yarn, one in each colour. We stopped when we ran out of yarn. And that was enough. In fact, my husband was even economic enough to use the last few strands of each colour to make the last pompom. I attached it as a bit of a joke as a dangler. Make sure each pompom has a long tail when you tie it off.

Once you have all your pompoms, you start being creative. Tie the pompoms to the wreath. Again, it doesn’t matter that the back is not very tidy. No-one is going to see that. All you need to make sure is that your pompoms are secure and don’t hang too loosely.

It will look odd for a while, but when you pass the half-way stage, it will start taking shape. Rearrange the order, and the size of the pompoms as you go along. It’s all about how the whole wreath looks together, so there’s plenty of opportunity for playing around. I thought of candy striping the colours at first, but gave it up when I thought that looked too harsh and regimented. Not a good Christmas look!

Hopefully you will not run out of pompoms before you’ve covered up your wreath, otherwise, you will need to make some more.

 

I thought that my woolly Christmas wreath needed some sparkles, so I loosely wrapped some i-cord made out of gold-coloured crochet yarn. I could have threaded small Christmas decorations to the pompom tails to let them dangle off the wreath, but I didn’t have the right colours.

 

It only needed a hanger attached – which is also sparkly.

 

This really can be made in an afternoon with all the family being involved. Some of the pompoms were a bit more hairy than necessary, (my younger has a lot of enthusiasm but our scissors didn’t co-operate). It doesn’t matter, a little trim and the exact form of each pompom is lost in the whole shape of the wreath. This is a really rewarding, fast and fun project to do.

Have fun!