Spider Poms & Festive Balls of Yarn Wreath

My latest creation in yarn is this adorable yarn balls wreath, made out of the yarn from my yarn stash.

I'm a recovering yarn hoarder, and recently fell in love with creating wreaths using yarn to lessen my stash, as well as make something cute that will actually be used for a part of the year.

The spiders in the wreath are pom-poms and the backing is a foam wreath wrapped in several finger-knitted chains.

My marketing-genius husband came up with the name of the wreath, as I was trying to incorporate many uses for a wreath that could be made out of any color of yarn, for any season or festivity.

This particular wreath is meant to celebrate the season of Halloween, but I could easily have made the balls using shades of Autumn to represent Fall, red, green and white yarn for Christmas or the Holidays, red, pink and white balls for Valentines Day, or shades of green for St. Patrick's Day all mixed with different types of embellishments instead of spiders.

Hopefully you get the gist that this project is intended to be customized for all types of festivities, and to use up that yarn stash that I know I'm not the only one who has such a thing....

Thanks for looking & reading and if you make one similar to this or based on this PLEASE let me know by posting a picture in the comments!

Step 1: Materials & Tools Used

The materials I used to make this fun and cute wreath are:

three coordinating colors of acrylic yarn (for my Halloween theme, they are green, orange and lavender)
pom pom makers in various sizes (see Step 3) and yarn to make the pom poms (black in my case for spiders)
FLoraCraft Beveled Edge Wreath, 14-Inch by 2-1/2-Inch by 2-Inch, White
12, two and one-half inch (2-1/2") foam balls (I used two packages of Smooth Foam Balls 2.5" size)
Mini Low Temperature Glue Gun
about six (6) 12" long black chenille stem (pipe cleaners)
various sizes of googly eyes
1-1/2-Inch black ribbon or wider ribbon to hang the wreath, not pictured here (I used a black wired ribbon I had in my craft stash)
scissors (not shown)

The total time it took to make this project was somewhere between 3 to 4 hours over the course of three days.

Step 2: Wrap the Balls With Yarn

As stated in the intro, I made this particular wreath in a Halloween theme.

I used orange, green and purple (lavender color, actually) in groups of four balls each.

I started with a line of hot glue on the ball and stuck the end of the yarn on the ball. Occasionally I would place a drop of glue (or a line of glue) on the ball to keep a loose piece in one spot before continuing the winding around the ball.

When I felt that the ball was sufficiently covered and I couldn't see anymore white, I cut the yarn and glued the end to the ball.

Wrapping and gluing the yarn around all twelve balls took me about an hour.

Step 3: Make Pom Poms for Spider Bodies... or Not

For this Halloween themed wreath, I made black yarn pom poms for the spider's bodies.

I used both a small and large pom pom maker from Clover in two different sizes - and I think they are the 1 inch and 2 inch sized ones.

You can also make pom poms from cardboard circle cut-outs, as shown in these tutorials: Warm Fuzzy Wreath or Pom Poms.

This of course is an optional step if you are making other types of Holiday themed wreaths, but if you make the spiders, I only used one pom pom for each spider body.

Essentially making a pom pom with the pom pom maker is relatively simple: (1) wind the yarn around two of the moveable curved ends, (2) close both ends around the center part of the device, (3) cut around the center of the maker, (4) tie a string around the center of the pom pom tightly and (5) pull the device apart and fluff the pom pom.

*Note: I tried to get my kiddos to help me do this, but all they wanted to do was make their own pom poms!*

Step 4: Complete the Spiders

I cut each pipe cleaner into at least two legs, and not to waste any of the left over pieces, I wrapped two of the smaller pieces of pipe cleaner together to make one pair of the legs. (See the photos.)

Once the spider's legs were bent into shape, I took four pairs and glued them together to place on the smaller pom poms using the glue gun.

For the bigger pom poms, I glued each pair of legs to the bottom.

The googly eyes were glued last, to ensure that they coordinated with the location of the leg placement.

Step 5: Wrap Yarn Around Your Wreath Base

I originally thought I was going to wrap the wreath base with yarn by going around and around the edge with the black yarn.

I chose to finger knit about three long chains of black acrylic yarn and wrap the wreath in those chains. The finger knitting took about an hour total, whereas I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to wrap a single strand (or even two strands at one time) of yarn around the wreath base.

The finger knitting tutorials are linked below. I ended up using about an entire skein of black yarn, and I'm unsure of the exact length of chains or yardage of yarn.

The photos show the basics of finger knitting, and it's a series of wrapping your fingers in an over under pattern with the yarn and pulling loops over each other.

If you don't want to finger knit a chain as shown here, you could wrap yarn around the wreath base as shown in these different Instructables:

Spooky Yarn Wreath by Vicki Howell

Yarn Patriotic Wreath by courtneylittrell

Crochet Flower Wreath by doodlecraft

Instructables has several finger knitting tutorials: How to Finger Knit by momoluv and Finger Knitting by lgioteno just to name a couple.

I learned how to finger knit by watching a video tutorial on You Tube by Fiber Flux.

Step 6: Glue Balls and Poms Onto the Wreath

I used my low temp glue gun to glue the yarn balls onto the best side of the wreath.

In order to get all twelve balls onto the wreath, I had to glue the balls to the outside edge and of course ended up with a little space on the last two.

I then filled in the holes with spider poms, glued as randomly as possible. I wanted five spiders (as there's five in our family) as it's an uneven number which I've been told is an appealing aspect of arrangements.