I love using jelly rolls for my quilting and sewing projects. They are already precut and provide an instant scrappiness feeling. Using leftover Christmas strips I had in my scrap stash, I decided to create some fun fabric coasters for the holidays. These can be used throughout your home for drinks, mats for candles, under candy jars and more. You can also make them for gifts for friends, family and teachers. Maybe include a candle, mug or jar of sweets with them.
Prepare Fabric and Batting
Of course the first thing you need to do is sort through your scraps for strips of fabric. If you are using a jelly roll you can cut the strips in half lengthwise. This is what I chose to do, and I was not very precise because I wanted to have that scrappy effect so if there was a slight width difference it did not matter. Next, I used leftover batting pieces cut into 4 inch squares, and backing fabric cut into 4 1/2 inch squares.
For batting my personal preference is the Warm and Natural Cotton Batting by the Warm Company. I have been using this for years. It provides warmth, but has a low loft. This batting makes my quilts comfy and holds up.
Construct Fabric Coasters
After cutting out the components I sorted my strips into sets so I could make four matching coasters. You could also just randomly grab strips, but I wanted to have a set of coasters. I took the strip I wanted to be my center and placed it diagonally on my batting square, and trimmed to length. Then I placed the next strip on top of it with right sides facing, and stitched a 1/4″ seam allowance. Once sewn, I pressed the strips open and moved onto the next one. This process was repeated until the batting square was covered. This is the same process used for foundation pieced strip quilt blocks.
After all my squares were sewn I trimmed each one to 4 1/2 inches square. I then placed a completed strip block on top of a backing block, with right sides facing. These were sewn together leaving a two inch opening on one side. Corners were trimmed and then they were turned right sides out. I gave them a good pressing at the iron. (You can save your trimmed corners to make fabric confetti.)
Final Touches
I chose a quilting stitch off of my machine to close the opening and provide a decorative edging to the coasters. You could also choose to hand stitch the opening closed using a ladder stitch. See some of my completed coasters below. Of course, there was a part of me that wanted to take them and turn them into another quilt, but I resisted.
Check out more of our posts here.
Disclosure: We are an Amazon Affiliate and some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. If you purchase through our link you will not pay a penny more. We will receive a small percentage back from that purchase without any additional cost to you. This helps us support our blog and we thank you for your support! We do not recommend anything that we do not use ourselves.
