upcycled fiber coasters tutorial

Recently I met up for a day full of fun with my friend and fellow artist Jane LaFazio. We met at Liberty Station in San Diego and visited Visions Art Museum, took lots of photos, ate a fabulous lunch and exchanged materials to create with. I gave Jane a bag full of painted canvas scraps and Jane gave me a whole bunch of denim and ribbon scraps. I knew right away I would put these scraps to use for a holiday gift tutorial- a set of fiber coasters.

Denim is a such a great material to create with and using upcylced jeans is a great way to save money!

Scraps of ribbon and scraps of fabric (even the tiny ones) are also great to put to use in a variety of projects.

I started by cutting out squares from the denim.

I cut up the scraps of ribbon and also added tiny scraps of my own fabric that I had on hand.

I scattered the scraps onto the surface of each denim square

and sewed them down to the surface with free motion stitching.

I continued to sew more scraps until I was satisfied with the surface.

Then I cut out a piece of tulle to layer over the surface of the square.

I wanted to add another layer, additional texture and tone down the colors a little.

I stitched the tulle over the top of everything with lots of straight stitches.

When the surface was finished, I added another piece of denim to the back and with a zig zag stitch sew the front and back together.

I created a set of four.

Last, I created four little denim rolled beads that I added to ribbon that I used to tied them all together.

VOILA! The perfect little handmade holiday gift!

P.S

Want to see what Jane created with her bag of my painted canvas scraps and denim?

Head to her blog to check it out!