Pom Poms Galore!

I am super excited to share some DIY/DIT craftiness with you today! Not only is this project complete - like totally done and I don't even have to think about it anymore - but this is probably going to be the only project that I've had in mind since the beginning. Months and months ago I became enthralled with little lovely garlands... which looked easy and all but turned out to be the project from hell! I only managed to make one tiny little dumb poof ball based on that tutorial before I was throwing things. Not the best...

But I was determined! So I found a new way - inspired by my aunt and based on Martha's know how. So, ladies and gents, I have for you today....

Quick and Easy Peasy (Plus Super Cute) Garland Tutorial!

Materials

• fabric
• cutting mat and one of those roller cutters work excellent (thanks, Mom!)
• good fabric scissors
• pins
• wire - 24 gauge is what we used
• wire cutter
  
• ribbon
• needle big enough to fit ribbon
  

First things first... by a crap load of fabrics in your chosen colors! Wait, maybe don't buy as much as us. We bought a LOT! My mom kinda freaked out and we ended up with 10 yards total! holy geeze. Um, and we maybe used a third of that for garland making? But we have used it for some other projects and its definitely better to have more than less. And we had coupons. Anyway. Ok, get fabric. I'd say something stiffer like taffeta is best, but that can be expensive. We actually have three totally different types of fabrics for our pom poms and they all turned out ok, but the stiffer stuff definitely poofs up better and stays in place better.

Now that you've got your fabric, cut it all up into rectangles. Ours are six inches by five inches to in the end make a pom pom of about four inches wide, but play with the sizing to find what you like! You can also play with how many layers you use in your pom poms. At least three are needed to make a nice poofy pom. We used four layers. Here are my lovely rectangles...
Also, take your wire and cut a bunch of segments approximately five inches long. You'll use these in a bit but its good to have them all handy and ready.

Take your four cut rectangles, line em up, and pin them together. Now, you are going to cut the edges to give the pom pom the desired texture. I've seen them with pointy edges or rounded edges - we rounded ours. The nice part about this step is that you don't have to be too picky. Make sure the corners are nice and round and kinda make a nice wave along the edges, but any oddities from this step are not too noticeable. Here is a funky looking bunch as a good example:

Now you are going to take your four layers of fabric (take the pins out! ouch!) and accordion them. As small as you can get the accordions without too much work. And accordion them the long way? short way? Um, start with the shorted edge towards you and then accordion that way. I dunno what to call that!

Then, when you have it all accordioned up, take one of your pieces of wire and wrap it tightly around the middle of your fabric bunch. It should look roughly like this:

Now poof that sucker! Pull and yank and squish it - don't be shy - until its a lovely little poof ball of a pom pom! Like zis:

Beautiful!

Now make a bunch more. I think we had roughly 70 poms of each color? Or something ridiculous like that. With your ribbon and big needle (get a strong one! I broke a little puny one after two poms!), string up your lovely poms into an even lovelier pom pom garland! With all the pom poms I had, I used up three rolls of 10 yards of ribbon. Aka I now have 90 yards of garland. Holy balls, batman, thats a lot of garland!

But I can't wait to hang them up and see them brightening our outdoor space!

(sorry for the poor lighting on these photos)

So there you have it. The garland tutorial that was months in the making!

Peace,
Jen

PS those are our colors! I don't think I've actually shown you our colors yet! I've become adept at describing them and they are as follows: "Granny smith green, robin's egg blue, and magenta/fuschia/pink/purple/berry color." See? adept.