It’s that slightly tricky time of the year. We’re all set for Spring. We haven’t quite got the weather or the stock to launch the season. But we have the time and enthusiasm to have a bit of fun.
We all made the cardboard disc poms at primary school. But to be honest they were pretty time consuming and quite fiddly. This method is super easy and super quick. Set two chairs a distance apart, or use a table (the further apart the chairs the more poms you’ll be making) and start wrapping your wool around the chair legs. Use less wool for the tiny poms and more wool for the bigger as you want them to be nice and dense.
Once you have completed the winding, tie off the end of the wool around the chair leg. Cut even lengths of embroidery thread (15cm is perfect) to secure the poms and start tying them around your wool skein to create even sections. And tie really tight because this holds the final pom pom together. Each section will become the diameter of your pom poms so just use your eyes to calculate the size.
Once you’ve tied all your threads, you can cut the end of the wool skein from the chair legs. Now make a neat cut through the wool at the centre of each of your sections, the thread is now at the centre of each bundle of wool. Fluff out the wool around the centre to make a pom pom. And for a final flourish steam them over a kettle to make a fully rounded ball.
Harriett chose the colours to reflect the palette in Womenswear at the start of this season. She used quite muted shades with a little bit of jollity (isn’t this what we call feel like at this time of year?). And we made them in solid colours. But if you’re making them at home for fun, they’re a brilliant way of using up bits of old wool and look great made up in of lots of different colours. Just keep adding different wools to your skein around the chair legs (make sure you tie each new wool on and off the chairs otherwise you’ll get in a right old tangle).
So many many ways to use a pom pom. We’ve made a pom pom backdrop to grace our new window for Bellerose womenswear by tying the poms onto long strings and making a curtain to suspend behind the mannequins. We had a glorious delivery from brand new accessories brand Monk and Anna so Harriett tied the poms on to branches suspended from the ceiling on the First Floor and they have created a weird but pretty sort of lichen effect (don’t cut the embroidery thread which secures the pom until you have decided what you’re going to be making. Harriet used this thread to tie onto the branches). As an alternative flower arrangement we tied little poms onto twigs and filled jugs with these woolly flowers. And for a more delicate display we used tiny poms and tiny little glass vases.
