Pompom Chickens

When I’m not working from home, I work in hospital arts and run workshops all over the place, including for the lovely team at Shipley Art Gallery

I was supposed to be doing a Beautiful Birds workshop there this Friday but that’s not going ahead now. So I thought I’d share my plan for a pompom chicken with you here – something to do if you’ve got some knitting yarn to spare!

I like to use Clover’s pompom makers but you could go ‘Old School’ and use cardoard rings! (My first ever pompom make was ‘Posy Flump’ remember ‘The Flumps’ from kids TV?!) So, are you ready ? Here we go!

You Will Need

6.5 mm pompom maker . Red yarn for face details – 10 g. Body colour yarn – 30 g 

Red felt for cheeks and crown. Orange felt for beak. 2 x orange beads for eyes

1 x pipe cleaner for legs. Scissors. Glue

1. Wrap half the pompom maker with the body colour. The yarn needs to fill the semicircle, try to avoid catching the flat bits of the maker in the yarn. Keep wrapping til this half of the maker is full.

2. To make the head, follow the diagram. at one ned of the next half of the pompom maker, wrap red yarn about 20 times around to make a strtipe about 1.5cm wide. Cut the red yarn and continue wrapping with the body colour. Add about 4 layers across the whole semicircle. Then, just just under half way act=ross from the first red stripe, add another about 1cm wide, 20 wraps of the yarn. Cut the red again and continue to fill this side with the body colour.

3. Fold in the pompom maker so it forms a circle and then cut around your pompom with sharp,pointed scissors. Take a length of the body colour yarn and wrap it twice around the pompom pulling it tightly to make your pompom secure. Tie off with a double knot and release your pompom from the maker.

4. Now you need to sculpt your pompom into a chicken shape. Using those nice sharp scissors (!) first trim a couple of millimetres from all round the pompom, this will make it look denser and thicker.

5. Now shape the wings using diagram A as a guide, trim another 5mm all around the pompom except at the horizontal lines. this should give you a line of longer tufts, or ‘wings’ on either side of the body.

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6. Next, turn your chicken sideways and trim from the tail to the head in a curving line see diagram B! Then trim the fron so it is a little flatter – try not to cut the red yarn so it sticks out a little bit to form part of the chicken’s wattle.

7. Keep turning and trimming your chicken until you are happy with it’s shape – go steady! Cut too far and your pompom may COLLAPSE!!

8. Cut the wattles comb and beak from felt, or card if you dont have felt to hand, and fix these to your chicken with a dab of glue. Push apart the tufts where you want them to go, add the glue and then push in the felt shape. Stick the beads onto the red eye patches.

9. Make the legs and feet from a length of pipe cleaner. Cut 2 x 10cm lengths, the first 3 cm are going to be the leg. Concertina fold the rest 6 times to make 3 toes, fold the leg up at a right angle to the toes add a blob of glue to the top of the leg and stick firmly into the under carriage of your chicken!

Cock a Doodle Dooooo!

Hope you had fun making that – remember if at first you don’t succeed…..I have made a dozen of these now and the first ones were NOT pretty! Post a picture of your chicken in the comments !