DIY: Pom Pom Tutorial w/ Mr. FP's Formula

Hey all, long time, no see. I'm still alive, I swear. Unfortunately, the demands of university, marriage, and keeping apartment often interrupt my ability to stay connected with the blogging world. And although I'm not writing, I'm still reading all the lovely words from fellow bloggers about wedding planning, newlywed life, babies, and the challenges that come along with it all.

Today though, I have a good reason to write. I've been getting tons of comments and e-mails lately about the process of making pom poms for our wedding and the formula we used to alter the standard tutorials on the internet. In my original post on the subject of poms, I talked about Mr. FP's amazingness and how he managed to make a formula which allowed us to customize the size of our poms without ruining the ratio needed to make them look proportionate.


And after losing it once, then twice, then three times, I've finally recovered that formula and decided to commit it to blogging because 1) people have asked and 2) so I can never lose it again and Mr. FP won't have to have a heart attack every time I ask him to make it again from scratch.

So here we go. This formula is based on the original one found on Martha Stewart's website, here. That tutorial uses 20 inches as the width (w) and 30 inches as the height (h) and worked out in a formula, the original looks like this:

w X h
(h/3) x 2 = w
(w/2) x 3 = h

(30/3) x 2 = 20
(20/2) x 3 = 30

(little 'x' stands for multiply, just in case that's not clear)

With Mr. FP's formula you replace the (w) with a smaller number you want to use as width (because the width in the original is smaller than the height, obviously) and use h = (w/2)x 3 to get the bigger number that will correspond to the height.

For example, if you want to make one with 10 inch width, you need to use the formula to find the proportionate height or it will come out oddly shaped. So the formula would look like this:

(w/2)x3 = h

You know the width is 10, so you can input that, divide it by 2 and then multiply that number by 3 to get the height:

(10/2) x 3 = h

And when you work out the math, that gives you a height of 15. If you did it in reverse and knew you wanted a height of 15 and needed to figure out the width, you'd just use the other formula: (h/3)x2 = w ..... (15/3)x2 = w ..... (15/3) x 2 = 10.

And even with the formula, the process isn't easy. I played around with the numbers for a while before deciding which size worked best for us. I do remember liking the 10x15 size and one that was slightly larger but alas, I entirely forget the actual sizes we used. But never fear, the formula is here to help, at least a little.

Explaining it in writing can be difficult so if you are confused, don't feel bad. If you have any questions or need anything clarified, just let me know and I (and by I, I mean Mr. FP, math genius extraordinaire) will do my (his) best to explain more clearly.

Hope this helps! Happy pom pom-ing.