Learning How to Make Patterned Christmas Pom Pom Baubles

Back in 2013, Mr Printables started sharing how to make pom pom animals and pom poms with letter motifs worked into them, and linking to them on Craftgawker (remember Craftgawker?!)

Image copyright of mrprintables.com

Well I was fascinated! I loved the idea of wrapping yarn around a pom pom maker in such a controlled way that you could create pictures and designs on the surface of the pom pom. To add to the magic, there’s also a little ‘Ta-Da!’ moment at the end when you’ve finally finished wrapping and you get to cut open your pom pom. I love a good mystery project with a final reveal at the end!

Back then, I didn’t really have a need for an animal shaped pom pom, so I never did get around to giving it a try. However, the desire to make pom poms with motifs and patterns on them has lived quietly in my brain for well over a decade now, so this year, I thought I’d scratch that itch and have a go.

My local Maker Space are making Christmas decorations for St Mary’s Church’s annual Christmas tree festival. This year our theme is ‘Christmas Joy’, and what could be more joyful than a big round pom pom bauble with a Christmas image worked into it?

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Materials I used to make patterned pom pom baubles

Pom pom maker - I prefer the hinged pom pom makers by Clover or Habico. I’m using the 8.5mm pom pom maker by Habico for all of the following pom poms.
Yarn. Pom poms are very yarn hungry so I used inexpensive or donated yarn that I wasn’t overly precious about. Use a mixture of textures and thicknesses held together for added complexity and to speed things up.
Small, sharp precision craft scissors for cutting the pom pom open and for finer details. Sharp fabric scissors for sculpting the pom pom.
Big eye beading needle for threading a hanging cord through.
Strong upholstery thread, waxed linen thread or strong crochet cotton for tying the pom poms.
Metallic thread or Chinese knotting cord to hang the pom pom baubles from.
Kumihimo bobbins - if you have more than two yarns wrapped separately at a time, these help reduce tangles.

My First (Failed) Attempt - A Christmas Tree Pom Pom

I began by building up a simple long triangle for the tree, dotted with red yarn. I added a block of brown yarn for the pot and then filled the outside with natural cream yarn.

I had such high hopes! You could clearly see the Christmas tree shape when I first cut it open…

… but when I removed the pom pom maker, my Christmas tree unfurled its branches to reveal a much wider tree than I’d planned, and that cute little plant pot at the base became a long, thin line. I’d made more of a berry bush than a tree.

To top it off, I’d managed to wrap the second tree on the reverse side upside-down!

To prevent me from making the same mistake again, I dotted one side of the pom pom maker with Sharpie, so I knew which side was the top once I’d covered up my design with the background cover.

My Second Attempt - Another Christmas Tree Pom Pom.

If I’d actually stopped to think about it, I should have realised that the final wraps of yarn on the pom pom maker make up the outer edge of the sphere. I need to shrink and distort my motif width-wise if I want to avoid the design stretching out to the outer limits of the pom pom circumference.

At this point, I was still learning and experimenting. I wasn’t in a position to make a tutorial, but I did take a photo of every layer for my own reference.

Here’s my first layer. I’m using two strands of green yarn held together to create more visual interest. Also note that I’m using separate strands for the white background above and below the tree.

I added another layer of the same colours, this time bringing the white yarn further down to cover the top of the tree and adding a couple of wraps of red yarn for Christmas baubles.

For the third layer, I brought the white background down even further and added a little more red for a tree bauble.

For the last layer of the tree, I covered the dark red for the pot with the background colour and brought the top background yarn down further to cover more of the green.

Finally, I covered everything as tightly as possible with the background colour.

Here’s the final half of my pom pom with the arc at the base completely filled in with the background natural yarn.

I repeated the same winding pattern for the reverse of the bauble.

I’ll share how I tied my pom poms later on, but here’s how it looked before the trim…

… and here it is afterwards.

From making this second pom pom, I learned a few more things. I’ll make a list of everything I’ve learned with this experiment and post it at the end.

Reverse engineering my pom pom design

At this stage, I still wasn’t quite sure how the size and placement of the layers were affecting the final design, so I thought I’d analyse the photographs to see if it would help me to design future motifs.

I’ve overlaid just the tree wrap sections over the final cream yarn of the completed pom pom with all of the layers to scale. It’s almost like a cross-section of the pom pom while it’s still wrapped around the pom pom maker. I’ve numbered the layers to show how the tree design was reduced with every layer. I’m certainly no pom pom expert, but I was starting to get a better feel for how altering the wrap placement and coverage affects the final motif.

Christmas Pudding Pom Pom Bauble

I’ve seen quite a few Christmas pudding pom pom baubles online, but they’re all very simple and stylised - they all have a very definite straight line between the pudding and the white sauce. I wanted to make one that looked slightly more realistic, as if it had sauce dripping down the sides.

I designed a very simple half pudding as a kind of reference to follow while I was wrapping the pom pom.

I think the key to getting more detail on a pom pom like this is to go big! My pom pom maker is 8.5cm wide, so it requires a lot more layers to fill it. More layers mean more design definition.

These were the colours I chose for my Christmas pudding using oddments from my yarn collection. They’re all double-knit weight yarns and a real mixture of fibres and textures.

I divided the two brown yarns so that I could wrap four light brown, two dark brown, and one dark red, holding seven yarns at a time for the lower Christmas pudding.

As I was holding seven strands for the pudding, but only one strand for the white sauce, I ended up working three layers of the cream yarn for every single layer of the browns. (From here, I just call this one layer.)

For my first layer, I wrapped the cream yarn almost to the centre of the pom pom maker, filling the rest with the brown yarns.

I brought the brown further up over the cream for the second layer - this should create a drip effect with the previous layer.

I brought the cream wraps down to almost the centre again to create another drip…

… and then brought the brown back up again.

Finally, I filled the middle arch of the pom pom maker with a division of brown and cream again.

I repeated this wrapping pattern on the reverse section of the pom pom.

When I cut my pom pom open, I revealed definite drips, which was very pleasing!

As usual, after I tied the pom pom and removed the pom pom maker, my Christmas pudding pom pom was very untidy before its haircut. If you fill the pom pom maker to capacity (as I do), your pom pom will end up much wider than it is tall, so it needs a good trim to neaten it up. A fully filled pom pom maker results in a much denser pom pom. (It’s also a lot less likely to fall apart between cutting and tying.)

I trimmed my Christmas pudding into a relatively tidy ball using good-quality large fabric scissors. To give my Christmas pudding more of a 3-dimensional, realistic look, I went in with my precision craft scissors.

I carefully trimmed off several millimetres from all the way around the edge of the brown yarn with my small craft scissors, where the pudding meets the sauce. I went on to trim the rest of the pudding with my large fabric scissors, rolling it and ruffling it, trimming out any sections that stuck out from the slightly smaller ball shape I was trying to form. I wanted to give the impression that the sauce was thick and drippy on top of the pudding, so I wanted it to protrude out above the brown of the pudding..

Finally, I went in with my small scissors, cutting the cream yarn at an angle, all the way round the edge to try to give the impression that the sauce was rounded, rather than sticking out like yarn.

To top off my Christmas pudding, I needle-felted a couple of leaves. I could have just cut some holly leaves out of felt, but I do like the 3-dimensional quality I can get from needle felting. These are just free-formed, but I might have achieved a better result if I’d used the cookie-cutter method and a sugar flower holly leaf cutter.

I needle-felted 3 little berries out of crimson wool. You can read how to make these here.

To create a hanging loop, I took a length of Chinese knotting cord, folded it, and then knotted it.

I then used a big-eyed beading needle to thread both ends of the cord down through the middle of the pom pom separately.

It was then just a case of knotting the two ends of the cord, cutting it, and hiding the cut end amongst the longer strands of yarn.

To finish it off, I stitched my 3 felt beads together to form a loop and attached my two leaves underneath with a few stitches through the pom pom.

I absolutely love it! It’s so squishy but dense. With ‘Christmas Joy’ as our theme, this makes me smile every time I see it!

Poinsettia Pom Pom Bauble

At this point, I was starting to understand a tiny bit more about how to design and wrap a symmetrically patterned pom pom.

I got quite ambitious and decided to see if I could make a poinsettia pom pom. I wasn’t sure if I would manage to get the definition for a more detailed design like this, but my curiosity was piqued.

I definitely needed to use my large 8.5cm pom pom maker for this one!

I took my poinsettia design and warped it in Procreate so that it would sit on top of a semi-circle. This effectively gave me a pattern to follow. After a couple of false starts, I simplified my poinsettia design to this pixelated set of chart instructions. The gaps between the arched lines in the image above represent a single layer of yarn wraps.

To get better definition I used a separate length of yarn for each colour section of the pom pom. I join a new yarn in simply by wrapping it around tightly and securing the end under the first wrap.

I’m using kumihimo bobbins to wrap the separate yarns around to try to keep everything under control. At this stage, I’m still undecided as to whether this makes it less fiddly than just using a long length of yarn, but I’m giving it a good try. They do get tangled quite a lot, but it still feels quicker than pulling a long length of yarn through every time.

Here’s my first layer. I notice that most people who wrap patterned pom poms don’t usually work a layer at a time - they tend to build up a single colour at a time in little piles. That method wouldn’t really work for a complex design like this with sections that jut out over each other at an angle.

Here’s a collage of all of the layers as I placed them down. I haven’t gone into too much detail as it was quite time-consuming and took several hours to make half a pom pom. Sadly, I managed to fill the pom pom maker just before the final layer on the chart. I just covered everything in yellow yarn so that at least there would be a complete background behind the poinsettia.

For my own reference, this is approximately 9 layers of double knitting yarn on an 8.5cm pom pom maker - although I did stop winding yarn at the sides for the last couple of layers as it was getting overly full.

For the reverse of the pom, I didn’t have enough yellow yarn to cover the whole of the pom pom maker, but I also couldn’t bring myself to spend another 3 hours wrapping a layered pom pom. I thought I’d have a go at a much simpler flower design this time, employing the method I’ve seen other pom pom makers use.

Instead of building up layers of colour across the full arch of the pom pom maker, I wrapped bunches of colour in sections to try to form a representation of a poinsettia. This method felt a lot less precise - but at this point, I wasn’t even sure if my original method had worked so it was a very useful learning experiment.

This method took less than an hour to wind, but I’m sure if I did it repeatedly, it would take significantly less time.

After 4 hours (total) of wrapping, it was now time to cut my pom pom open!

Here’s the side I methodically wrapped, layer by layer…

… and here’s the side I wrapped more quickly in bunches of yarn sections. It’s all looking very hopeful!

To tie my pom poms, I use a strong upholstery thread. You want a thread that can be pulled on really hard without risk of breaking. When I knot it, I wrap the thread through 5 or 6 times to reduce the chance of the knot slipping, and then work another knot on top of it. I will do this several times, wrapping the thread around the pom pom and placing the knot in a different area until it feels like the knot cannot be tightened any further.

Mr Printables recommends a waxed linen thread, which further reduces the risk of the knot slipping, but I’ve also seen other pom pom makers use a fine cotton crochet yarn, which is probably as strong as upholstery thread but wouldn’t dig into your hands as much.

Here’s my pom pom immediately after I removed it from the pom pom maker. It’s like an untidy, fluffy rugby ball!

To get a sharper pattern definition, I needed to trim a significant amount of yarn off my pom pom. A dense pom pom is also a lot more durable. This is going to be a Christmas bauble that will hopefully get packed away year after year, so it needs to be hard-wearing.

I used my sharpest pair of fabric scissors, rolling it, fluffing it, and trimming it until I was happy with its roundness and density. It was very satisfying!

After trimming, my final pom pom is about 8cm, which is a little smaller than the pom pom maker I used.

Frustratingly, I don’t think either side looks obviously like a poinsettia. The vague suggestion of a poinsettia, maybe… I think I might have been a little too optimistic. Regardless, I’m still really happy with my final pom pom bauble. Pleasingly, my favourite side is the one that I spent the most time on. It has an organic complexity, while the one wrapped in bunches of colour looks simpler and bolder. For me, the complex one is just visually more interesting.

I’m really learning the limitations of surface pattern pom pom design. Natural, organic motifs lend themselves perfectly to pom pom decorations, as imperfections are inevitable. I’m embracing the imperfections!

Star pom pom

In contrast to the complicated, organic shape of a poinsettia, I thought I’d try a bold star design next. Large pom poms use a lot of yarn, and there is quite a lot of wastage, so I didn’t want to use my precious handspun yarn to make pom poms. However, I was running out of inexpensive yarn… in the end, I chose a Christmassy red and green for my star pom pom. That might have been a mistake!

I designed a layer plan to follow, with teal blue/green for the star, and red for the background

I attempted to follow the pattern I’d designed, but it got much trickier to stay on track as the pom pom maker filled up. Again, I used several kumihimo bobbins to store my yarn on to allow me to layer up the design without carrying the colour across. As every layer hides the previous one, I found it very easy to lose track of where I was supposed to be. I also think I may have already reached my limitations for designing motifs for this size of pom pom…

I definitely need to invest in an extra-large pom pom maker!

The first reveal, when I cut the pom pom open, made me hopeful that I might have made a star pom pom.

But when I released the pom pom from the pom pom maker, it turned out that I’d made more of a festive tomato!

I attempted to rescue my festive fruit pom pom by giving it a significant trim. I sculpted it with my fabric scissors into a kind of drop shape and then cut a hole in the centre of the star so that I could glue in some sparkly crystals.

Hopefully, I managed to rescue it a little!?

Snow-topped striped pom pom bauble

At this point, I’d come to realise that my 8.5cm pom pom maker was better suited to simpler, bold graphic designs like the tree or Christmas pudding so I thought I’d make a basic striped pom pom with a bit of a twist.

I chose 4 slightly Christmassy colours from my small stash of cheap yarn …

… and divided each colour into 3 balls for each colour. This would allow me to work a kind of fade from the white into the coloured section - suggesting that snow had landed on top of the bauble. That was the idea anyway.

This was my process for every layer of the pom pom. I held 3 colours to wrap the lower part of the pom pom. When I was well past halfway, I dropped one coloured yarn and picked up 1 strand of white. After wrapping these yarns two or three times, I dropped one more coloured yarn so that I was now holding one coloured yarn and two white. I wrapped these yarns two or three times and then wrapped to the end holding just three strands of white yarn.

I reversed this wrapping pattern to work the same coloured yarns over a second layer and then changed colour to build up a striping pattern with a dithered fade into white at the end.

Here are my wraps at the end of every colour change.

I began making this pom pom by just allowing my balls of yarn to hang loose, but I very quickly got in a tangle. Much like knitting using the intarsia method, it became so much easier when I wound my separate yarn balls onto kumihimo bobbins.

Cutting the pom pom open revealed a satisfying speckled fade.

Before trimming…

… after trimming

To finish it off, I looped some metallic thread, knotted it, and threaded it through the pom pom using the big-eye beading needle. I attached a couple of beads to the top loop using a crimp bead.

I’m so pleased with my first attempts at making patterned pom pom baubles! I’ve learned so much just by allowing myself to play and experiment. These are going to look so cute hanging on our Christmas tree this year!

Now, I’m just itching to get hold of a bigger pom pom maker to see how much more detail I could capture if I were able to go bigger!

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Finally, here’s a summary of everything I learned from my first few attempts at making patterned pom poms -

Symmetrical designs are significantly easier! It is still possible to make some non-symmetrical motifs by building the design across the two halves of the pom pom - take a look at Mr Printables impressive examples of asymmetrical letters.
If you’re going to repeat a hidden motif on both sides of the pom pom, make sure to mark the top of the pom pom maker at one end.
Wrap the yarn tightly around the pom pom for a more dense final result.
Filling the pom pom maker to absolute capacity will result in a much denser pom pom, and it will also help the two halves of the pom pom stay together during cutting.
Remember that where you wrap the yarn at the base has a greater effect on that colour’s final position (not where it is positioned at the top of the wrap), as this is where it will be secured.
Holding several similar-coloured yarns together can create visual interest and speed things up.
When changing colour, cut the yarn at the top of the pom pom arch.
If you’re going to use the same colour repeated across one layer (more than a few strands apart), use a separate strand of yarn for each section to prevent rogue strands appearing where they don’t belong.
Use the sharpest scissors you can find for cutting the pom pom open. Large fabric scissors are useful for sculpting the pom poms. Roll it around in your hand, fluffing it up and trimming off small sections at a time until you achieve your desired shape.
Use a thread that won't break when you tug on it to tie your pom poms.
Bigger pom poms allow for more detail and definition in the final design. You can always trim it down for a really solid and dense patterned pom pom.
The more you trim it, the denser the pom pom.
Pom poms don’t have to be spherical. Experiment with pointed drop shapes, eyes, hearts… anything you can imagine.

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