Summer Fruit Felt Coasters

From my experience, there are just never enough coasters during summertime! Between all the iced drinks and the heat, that’s a lot of drippy cups trying to attack my furniture. I like to stop drippy cups in their tracks with absorbent coasters. These super cute Summer Fruit Felt Coasters are perfect for protecting your furniture from iced drinks, and are an easy and quick hand sewing project.

I use standard stiffened and regular craft felt for these. I would recommend sticking with the mid-range priced felt from Michael’s or Target, as the felt I’ve used from Walmart in the past is super thin and shiney and doesn’t hold up well.

You can make all kind of fruit, but today we’re learning how to make a lemon, a lime, a watermelon, and a dragonfruit! Let’s get started.

Check out my felt food tutorial series, too!

Summer Fruit Felt Coasters

Supplies:

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Red, dark green, bright pink, yellow, and light green stiffened felt.
Black and white standard felt
Red, light green, white, black, yellow, and pink embroidery thread
Embroidery needle
Pins
Pencil
Scissors
Extra large cup that is tapered, or a compass

Note: I used a big cup that was about 1/2 inch smaller on one end to measure my circles. The big colored circles measured 3.5 inches in diameter, and the little ones were 3 inches in diameter. You can either use the biggest tapered cup you own, or use a compass to measure out and draw your circle!

Lemon and Lime

We’re going to make the lime first. Use the big side of your cup to trace two circles onto your light green felt. Then use the small side of your cup to trace one circle on your white felt. Cut out your two green circles and one white circle. Let’s make the sections of the lime. Take your white circle, fold it in half, and place it on a piece of scrap light green felt. Trace around the half circle.

Mark the half circle into 6 even sections, and cut them out. Round the pointiest end slightly with your scissors on all the sections. Now that we have all the pieces cut out, let’s start sewing the lime.

Place the white circle in the center of one of the big light green circles. Arrange the 6 triangles on top of the white to form the section of the lime. Pin them in place. Thread a needle with three strands of the green embroidery thread. Bringing the needle up from the back, use a simple running stitch around the inside edges of each of the triangles. This also functions to sew the white down to the green.

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You don’t need to restart the thread for every section. Felt is thick enough that you can just continue the thread across the back to the next section like shown. Go ahead and sew all the sections down, and then tie the thread and cut it off in the back. Now we can’t have all that messiness showing, so take that second big light green circle and set it on the back of your lime, covering up those stitches.

Starting on the inside so you knot is hidden, do a simple running stitch all the way around the circle. When you get to the beginning, knot off the thread, and run the needle through the side and up through the back of the circle and cut the thread off.

You’ve made a lime! Good job! Now to make the lemon, you just do the exact same thing with yellow felt and thread. Tada! Lemon done!

Watermelon and Dragon Fruit

Now for your watermelon, you’re going to cut out two big dark green circles and one small red circle. For the dragonfruit, you’ll need two big pink circles and one small white circle.

To make our watermelon, we also need watermelon seeds. To make these I took a piece of scrap felt and traced the end of a pencil to get a super small circle. Then I drew a triangle off one side of the circle to for a seed shape! I cut it out, and this was the pattern.

I then used the pattern to cut out 8 seeds from my black felt. Arrange the seeds on the red circle, and pin them in place. Use black embroidery thread to sew the seeds down, using 3-4 stitches per seed.

Set the red circle on top of one of the green ones, and sew it down around the outside with red thread. Then add the second green circle and sew the two green circles together. You now have a watermelon!

For our dragonfruit, we have a use a special type of embroidery stitch called a french knot. It’s one of my favorite stitches to do for creating dots and little seeds. Thread 3 strands of black embroidery thread onto your needle and knot the end. Come up through the back of your white circle. Hold the needle in your dominant hand and the end of the thread that is coming out of the felt with your other hand.

Place the needle horizontally in front of the thread, and wrap the thread forward around the needle two times. Take the needle and insert it into the felt just a tiny bit away from where the thread is coming out.

Holding the needle steady in the felt, use your other hand to lightly snug down the thread, pulling it close to the felt. Now you’re going to pass your needle the rest of the way through the felt and the looped thread, making sure to hold the other end of the thread in place with your thumb. Pull the thread snug, and you have a french knot! Now move your needle over a bit, and make another one!

I used a zig zag pattern as I went, filling the center of the circle with seeds. Make sure to leave at least 1/4 inch of space on the outside of the circle to sew it down later. The back looks kind of cool too. I don’t mind the black thread showing through the felt, as dragon fruit is translucent and your can often see layers of seeds farther down. When you’re happy with how many seeds you have, tie the thread off in the back. Place the white circle on top of one of your pink circles, and sew it down with white embroidery thread.

Then all you need to do is add your second pink circle on the back, and sew around the outside with your pink embroidery thread. You have a cute little dragon fruit! I wanted to show you how the neatly finished backs look. I find that things like neatly finished backs make all the different in your homemade projects.