How to Add a Detachable Pompom

I hope all of you are staying safe, staying healthy, and staying inside. This is a difficult time for so many of us, and we look to those activities we can still enjoy, those activities that calm us and make us feel fulfilled and productive, those that provide a sense of stability in this storm of uncertainty. For me, nothing fills that void better than knitting. I have been working on a few new designs, and I plan to release an Outlander-inspired capelet very shortly! Nevertheless, I have to admit, I’m having a tough time focusing. My mind feels fuzzy, pulled in a million directions, unable to concentrate. Everything seems to take much longer than it should. Designing feels almost out of my reach right now! So please bear with me!

For the time being, I’d like to offer a short, practical tutorial on pompoms. Who doesn’t love a pompom? Well, many people do not love pompoms, and so we have a solution for that problem: the detachable pom!

I am slow to adopt new trends, I admit it. I still don’t own a smartphone, if you can believe it. And so the trend of the oversize faux fur pom has largely flown under my radar. But, I thought I’d finally give it a try with my Caiseal and Hemsedal Hat designs.

I purchased a dozen faux fur pompoms from Amazon. These were not extremely oversized, just right for my hats. However, these poms (and most faux fur poms) will be ruined if machine washed or dried. How could I make them detachable so that the hats could be washed without the pompom? A button, of course!

Here I will walk you through the steps so you can make your pompoms detachable.

Faux fur pompoms are manufactured with an elastic loop so they can be attached to the garment. If your pom does not have an elastic, you can sew on a loop of beading cord, or you can create a loop from yarn. Be sure the loop is about 2″ (5cms) in length.

First, you will want to find a larger button to sew to the inside of the hat. I would suggest approximately 1″ (25mm) in diameter. Don’t worry, the button will lie flat and will not bother the head of the person wearing the hat. Sew the button onto the inside of the hat at the center crown.

Once the button is sewn firmly in place, you’ll need a medium-size crochet hook in order to pull the elastic or yarn loop to the inside of the hat.

Insert the hook into the hat, from the inside toward the outside, as close as possible to the button. On the outside of the hat, the hook should be as close as possible to the center crown.

Now loop the elastic of the pompom around the hook and pull through to the inside of the hat.

Once the elastic or yarn loop is pulled through to the inside, wrap it around the button. You may need to wrap more than once to ensure that it is snugly attached.

And there you have it! To detach the pompom, unwrap the loop from the button, and pull the loop back through the hat. You can detach for washing, or simply to give your hat a new look.

Please keep knitting and stay safe! I hope to feature my new capelet in my next post!