The Fan Zone - DIY Team Pom Poms

Hey there!

If you’re like me, you often see sporty crafts that you really want to try. I spent much of the fall creating football crafts and now that we’ve finished with football, we can get started on basketball crafts.

Well, actually this craft is an any sport craft as well as a kid friendly craft. As a Fan Zoner, you know that when you cheer for any home team, you need a good set of pom poms! You could order a nice set of pom poms for your team but that’s gonna set you back a little bit. You could find some generic colors but how likely are you to find your team’s specific color? So, when I saw a DIY pom pom craft, I was on-board!

The fantastic thing about this craft is that you can find all the things at your local dollar store or big box store. The main things that you need are…. plastic tablecloths!

Yep, for this diy craft you need…

* Rectangle table cloths in your team’s colors (I went random team this year)

* Scissors

* Clear tape

* Wooden Dowels (12” X .25”)

* Duct tape in a coordinating color

The first very important note is DO NOT open your tablecloth all of the way. You aren’t setting a table! We don’t want the length, we want the width. Most of them are layers folded over and over and you have the option of opening it so that they are about 13” - 15” wide but long enough to drape over your table. That’s how you want it opened. Because these tablecloths are so long, I only used 9” of table cloth. That is plenty of plastic for a nice pom pom. If you want a super thick pom pom you can double that but you will also need a thicker dowel.

Once you have cut your tablecloth into a 9” X 13” piece of still folded, layered sheets, take a large chip clip or clothes pin to hold the folded side together. Then, place something about 1 ½” from the clip. You want to cut ¼” strips just up to that stopping point. You are going to use that to attach your pom pom to the dowel.

Once you have cut your ¼” strips, carefully remove your chip clip and tape your dowel to the uncut top of the tablecloth.

When you are rolling the layered sheets around the dowel, make sure that they are tight. I taped the first portion of each color and rolled very tightly.

Because the tablecloth was folded, the ends (the side that was NOT in the chip clip) will have some connected edges. Many of the instructions mention cutting the end of your strips before this last step. I found it much easier to do all of the steps and then at the end, fluff each of the strips out and cut the ends then.