Fabric Coasters In a Lovely Walnut Bowl

Quilters have stashes of fabric in their houses. There, I admitted it. And then there are stashes of leftover fabric scraps. Bags of them. I was reading a book that was talking about organizing the scraps into like sized pieces and putting them into bins by color. It is a great idea and someday, when I have nothing else to do, I might just get around to doing just that. Until then, I'll just dig through the bags...

For this project, I found the leftover scraps from my bright cotton placemats and I started cutting them into strips of various widths.

I sewed those strips into squares just a bit bigger than the largest circle that I wanted to cut, then I ironed on a fusible to the wrong side of the square before running it through my Go! machine with the circle template. Nice.

I cut out squares from a bright striped cotton,

then did the same thing, ironing on a fusible, pulling off the paper backing and then running it through the machine to make large circles.

Speaking of stashes, I have a bag of batting scraps that I've saved over the years, that I pulled out for this project. Now is the perfect time to use those small pieces. Ha! I knew they would come in handy down the road. I fused one of the striped circles to the batting and then cut out the shape.

I have Fiestaware dishes in all sorts of bright, fun colors, so the coasters will add to the color on my dining room table:

I did a simple zig-zag stitch around the circle using a variegated cotton thread and the coasters are ready to use. Marshall gave me a lovely walnut bowl for Christmas and it's just the right size for holding the coasters.

Doesn't he do nice work? It's a beautiful addition to our table.

I wanted to leave you with a laugh for the day, so I decided to share with you the photo I took of the "bra tree." While on the ski lift, we cruise by a tree that is covered with bras that have been thrown on it. And just in case you're wondering, no, I didn't add anything!