Hi stitching fans!
Slighty less stitching and a bit more wooly activity on this one.
For those of you familiar with my instagram feed you may have seen this rug in its very early stages as one of my first posts. It has taken a while to get it finished what with work and sewing and other things getting in the way - but it is now done!
LOOK AT IT!!!
IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!!!!
Ahem.
What started this whole enterprise was me trying to find a cheap option for a rug and failing miserably due to them all apparently being made of gold or diamonds and therefore many hundred of thousands of pounds to buy. I mean, you walk on them for goodness sake, why so much money?! And I'm not talking beautifully crafted, actually-should-be-expensive Persian rugs here, I'm talking IKEA.
Anyway, I did what I normally do in these circumstances and thought to myself 'hang on a cotton-picking wool-winding minute, I'm sure there must be a way of making a rug that's cheaper and would result in something a bit more interesting than what IKEA have on offer..."
Several hours of pinteresting later...
Talk amongst yourselves...
...
As I say, several hours later I discovered pom pom rugs. I mean rugs...made of pom poms - why wouldn't you want one of those?!
So how does one make this magical thing?
I shall tell you.
This rug, fairly obviously, requires pom poms - quite a few as it turns out. I had visions when I started of a ten foot diameter circle covering the entire floor of my living room and me rolling about on it cackling with glee whenever I came home from a hard day at the office - but quite frankly life is too short, so I've got a little more.... Helen sized one.
So - pom poms.
My mother is a wonderful woman - if somewhat too inclined to over-indulge my love of all things crafty. What am I saying?! That's not a thing - it would be impossible to OVER-indulge the craft love! I'm sorry craft love, I didn't mean it.
Anyway, the most recent manifestation of this indulgence was at Christmas when I received in my stocking, not a lump of coal as it customary, or a satsuma covered in lint, or chocolate even...but this...
This, my dear friends, is a pom pom maker. Yes. A POM POM MAKER.
I of course mocked her relentlessly for this for a good twenty minutes until I thought that technically made me an ungrateful little somethingorother and so instead started to think of all the wonderful things I could do with pom poms!
'Hang on!' I thought to myself 'that whole pom pom rug thing I thought of ages ago was MADE for this contraption!' Or maybe the contraption was made for the rug...either way the two things need to be friends.
So my Christmas evenings were spent with wool 'borrowed' from my mum's stash making pom poms that the cats thought were also all of their Christmasses come early - I very much suspect there is still a heap of them behind a sofa somewhere that the cats casually sidle off to every now and then to roll about in.
Would you like to see how a pom pom maker works?! WOULD YOU?! It's going to blow your minds - really...
Hold on to your hats...the photogaphy goes down hill significantly at this point.
1. You take the PPM (official abbreviation) and hold it thus...
2. Unfold the arms...
3. Wrap your wool around one of the arms to create a little furry arm jacket...
That will look a bit like this when it's finished...
4. Snip wool to release your device and do the same to the other arm so you end up with two furry jackets and then snap the arms back into position to get back to the initial cirular 'arms in' format...
5. Now...take your scissors and cut along the grooves between the two circular plates...you may be so shocked by this that your face takes on a startled expression...
Once you've done that all the way round you'll end up with a little hairy jacket...
6. Take a piece of wool and wrap it around the edge, following the line you just cut...
7. Tie in a knot and pull as tight as you can - it will slide between the two sections and tie everything together in the middle. You'll want to leave the threads pretty long at this point so don't trim them!
8. Unfold the arms again...it's vital you stick your tongue out for this bit or it will all go HORRIBLY WRONG.
9. Pull the two pieces apart like a very big and fluffy oreo cookie...don't lick the filling.
10. You've totally gone and made a pom pom!
You'll need to fluff it up a bit and then can admire your handiwork!
Or..pull a manic expression...you know..up to you.
Congratulations!
Now make a few hundred more...it is slightly less fun on number 50...but not much.
To assemble your pom pom mountain into a rug you'll need to attach them to something.
I used loose weave hessian for the back of the rug and attached the pom poms by threading the long tails through and tying them off at the back - very simple. I will at some point put a proper backing onto the hessian so it doesn't slip about and has a bit more sturdiness to it, but for now it's doing its job very nicely.
So there you go - pom pom rugs. Bloody mavellous.
Love and kisses
Helen