She’s Crafty: fabric scrap coasters

I’ve needed coasters for my Ikea desk for ages. I’ve just been using junk mail and paper towels, to protect my desk from my sweating glasses, but that was just getting old. So, I decided to do something about it and come up with a post for She’s Crafty at the same time. I’ve seen those fabric coasters made from scraps around the interwebs and decided to make my own with no tutorial or even much sewing experience at all.

Looking through my fabric, I discovered that I had some fabric scraps that Michelle Engel Bencsko of Cicada Studio sent me to review. Michelle is a printed textile designer and she sells her collections in her Etsy shop. Michelle has also licensed work to Henry Glass & Co, including Dogwood and Shade Garden, 100% cotton quilting collections. In addition to Cicada Studio, she also also teamed up with Gina Pantastico to create a jointly run fabric manufacturing company, Cloud9 Fabrics, which uses environmentally responsible organic cotton base cloths and print methods. Their premier collection is called My Happy Garden.

So, I had this really great great fabric from Cicada Studio and an even bigger need for some coasters, and this is what I came up with.

Materials:

• Light or mid weight cotton or canvas fabric. This is what I used.
• Quilting batting
• Coordinating thread
• Straight pins
• Scissors
• Pinking sheers
• Piece of cardstock to create template
• Ruler

How-to:

1. Cut a template out of cardstock. I made mine 4″ x 4″, which is a nice big size for even those great big mugs.  I used the template as a guide to cut out each piece of fabric as well as matching pieces of quilt batting. I used straight pins to keep the template from shifting while I cut. You do not need to cut the pieces exactly to size, you are going to cut them again with the pinking sheers. Just make sure that they are not smaller than the template.

2. Then I made a sandwich out of 2 pieces of the fabric and a piece of batting. Use the fabric as the ‘bread’ (with the design facing out) and the batting as the ‘stuffing’.  Pin all 3 layers together with straight pins. Don’t put the pins right on the edge.

3.  Use pinking sheers to trim the coasters. Cut through all 3 layers at the same time.

4. Using a sewing machine, sew the 3 layers together all the way around.  Create your seam about 1/8″ away from the edge and leave the edges rough. Try to sew a little straighter than me, but don’t sweat it if you can’t…they don’t need to be perfect.

My thoughts:

I am not much of a sewer…not really one at all. I’m really only getting acquainted with my sewing machine and I found this project to be really easy and newbie friendly, so go for it!

I’m actually thinking about making a whole bunch more coasters for the rest of the house and as homemade gifts this Xmas. I’m thinking that some Cicada Studio or some Cloud9 Fabrics fabrics would make this gifts even more special.