Coasters

Back in July, I moved to Cardiff for a job and found myself living on my own for the first time in my life. After my family and I had cleaned, moved all my stuff in and done the obligatory Dunelm Mills shopping trip for home accessories there was still one thing missing.

I'd bought some lovely placemats from Dunelm but they had sold out of the matching coasters and I hadn't found any others that I liked in the shops. I vaguely remembered pinning a coaster tutorial or two on my Sewing: Small Projects Pinterest board and I have pretty fat quarters coming out my ears  so I decided to make some myself.
 

I went with this tutorial for quilted coasters from A Pretty Cool Life but with a couple of small adjustments. One to make the wrong side a bit neater and one to reduce bulk at the edges.

In the tutorial each quilted square is sewn separately and tied off at the back. I didn't really fancy tying all those fiddly knots so I did the quilting in one continuous line of stitching (SEE PIC) and then just had the two ends to tie off. I then threaded the ends through a needle and buried them in the middle of the coaster so they're no loose ends on either side, yay!. 

The tutorial also had you iron on the batting all the way to the edge. I decided to do it to the edge of the coaster rather than the fabric (as above) to reduce bulk at the edges.

The finished item!

I'm really pleased with how these turned out and I might just have to make a few more, I always seem to need more coasters!