New Christmas Coasters

This is the first time I've been home the Saturday after Thanksgiving in several years. To celebrate, we invited a few family and friends over to decorate for the holidays. I made chili and fixings and there was the constant hum of college football in the background. It was a great day that certainly put me in even more of a holiday mood. After everything was out, one of the kids noticed that there were no holiday coasters. I took care of that right away.


I had some bright Michael Miller Christmas prints left over from another quilt top. There were lots of strips and some other scraps. I decided to make some funky strip coasters. I cut 5" squares of batting and backing fabric. There were enough different prints so that each of the eight coasters has a different back.


I then took all of the strips and sewed them together into one long piece. I did not measure them at all and didn't worry about whether they were straight or right side up.


I took my ruler to the strip set at any crazy angle I desired and cut 5" squares. I was able to get seven squares from the strip set. I had to piece the scraps to get the last one. It is shown in the upper right.


To sew them together, I put a batting square on the bottom, a backing square right side up, and a pieced strip square right side down. I sewed around three sides and half of the fourth side. I like to leave a fairly big opening to turn the coasters right side out. I get frustrated easily when things are hard to turn.


Once they were all turned right side out, I stitched once around the outside about an eighth of an inch from the edge to close the opening. After that, I experimented with quilting them. I tried quilting on either side of the strip seams and near just some of the strip seams. In the end, I decided that the extra quilting didn't add anything to the coasters and settled on an extra line of stitching around the outside edges, about a quarter inch from the first one.


This was a fast project that adds fun to our holiday decorations. There are just enough scraps left over for me to make a matching potholder!