How To: Felt Snowflake Coasters & Ornaments

This project was inspired by traditional paper snowflakes.

It started out as a tutorial for snowflake ornaments, and then when I was making them my mum said "oh, are those coasters?"... so of course I just had to make some snowflake coasters too!

 

To make your snowflakes you will need:

- thin white felt

- black felt

- matching sewing thread

- a sewing needle & sharp sewing scissors / embroidery scissors

- circle templates

- plus narrow black ribbon if you want to make your snowflakes into ornaments

1) Make templates for your snowflakes by drawing around glasses or other small circular things... or use the coaster template provided at the bottom of this post... which will be uploaded as soon as I can remember where I put it last week! (oops!) In the meantime you could draw around a circular coaster you already own.

2) For each snowflake you want to make, cut out one white felt circle. Pin your paper template to the felt and cut around it carefully. Then remove the pins and set the template aside.

3) Fold your circle and cut shapes into it, in the same way you would when making paper snowflakes.The thinner your white felt the better, as you can fold and cut it more easily. I used the white wool blend felt from my shops which folded into quarters with no problem.

I folded each circle into quarters (folding twice), cut the point and then cut simple shapes along each side. Triangles work really well, and your designs don't have to be complicated to look really effective! Then I unfolded it and refolded it along the not-yet-cut sections of felt and cut more shapes along the sides and around the outside edge too. Hopefully if you've ever made a paper snowflake before that will make sense :)

 

4) Pin your finished snowflake onto a piece of black felt. Use white thread to stitch the snowflake onto the black felt... use single stitches wherever you need to hold the snowflake in place.

 

5) Then carefully trim the black felt with a pair of scissors, so you're left with a narrow border of black felt around your white snowflake.

6) Use the black circle you've just cut out as a template to cut a second matching piece of felt.

 

7) If you're making baubles, this is when you need to cut a length of ribbon (about 5inches long), fold it into a loop and and sew the ends in place at the top of your black backing circle. If you're making coasters, you can skip this step.

8) Finally, sew the front and back pieces together with black thread. I used running stitch for this, but you could also use whip stitch or blanket stitch if you prefer.

 

If you're making ornaments, sandwich the ribbon ends between the layers when you sew them together so they're hidden inside your ornament.

 

This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it for as many snowflake ornaments or coasters as you like for yourself or as gifts for friends but please don't make any for sale. Please feel free to borrow photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

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