Conversation Heart Coasters – An In-the-Hoop Embroidery Tutorial

Conversation Heart Coasters
These sweetheart coasters make a great conversation piece (har har) for Valentine’s Day, and they are also a fun and easy embroidery project. Making coasters in your embroidery machine is not difficult at all, it just takes a little knowledge and patience.
sweetheart coasters
Let me show you how to make these conversation heart coasters, and you can learn how simple it is to use your embroidery machine to make fun in-the-hoop projects.

How to Make In-the-Hoop Embroidered Conversation Heart Coasters
You will need fabric or felt, fusible stabilizer, wash-away adhesive stabilizer, adhesive spray, an embroidery machine, and some thread. Here goes…

Iron fusible interfacing to your felt (or fabric).

Set the design for the shape of your coasters on your machine. A circle or square would be the obvious choice, but since my machine comes with a heart frame, I used that with measurements of 8.0 X 9.4 centimeters. You want to use a simple straight stitch for this outline.

Hoop your felt and stitch the outline.

Remove the hoop from the machine and cut out the shape right on the stitch line. Use this shape as a template to trace and cut out a front and a back for each coaster. I ironed fusible interfacing to a variety of different colors of felt and cut out two of each for my coasters, but of course you can mix and match with different fabrics or patterns.

Now you need to prepare your hoop with wash-away adhesive stabilizer. I like these pre-cut sheets, because you can get four perfect sizes for a 4″ hoop from one sheet.

So go ahead and hoop the stabilizer. You want the backing still on the sticky side, and that side facing up towards you.

Use scissors to score a line around the inside edge of the hoop. You want to cut through the backing, but not all the way through the stabilizer.

Now peel away the backing to reveal the sticky surface of the stabilizer.

Put the hoop back in the machine, and stitch the same heart you stitched before, right onto the stabilizer.

Stick one felt heart (the top of a coaster) onto the stabilizer aligned with the stitched heart.

Now it’s time to add your design. I used a font that came with my machine and the embroidery edit function to create my conversation heart sayings and center them.

Embroider!

Remove the hoop from the machine and turn it upside down so you are looking at the back of your design. Now pick up the bottom piece of your coaster. Use a tad bit of tacky adhesive spray on the stabilizer side of the back piece.

Stick the bottom piece of the coaster to the back of the hoop aligned with the heart design.

Select the color you would like to satin stitch around the edge of your coaster. Wind a matching bobbin.

Put the matching bobbin in the machine, and slide your hoop back on. Delete your coaster design from the machine and create a new pattern for the satin stitch outline. So I used the same 8.0 X 9.4 centimeter heart, but with a satin stitch instead of a straight stitch. Let the machine work its magic, satin stitching the front and back of your coasters together.

Pull your hoop out. Almost done!

Now you just want to cut away as much of the stabilizer as you can, then wash the rest off with a bit of water (yay for wash-away stabilizer). You also want to trim your threads of course.

Repeat to make all of your coasters.
sweetheart coasters

See, it wasn’t as hard as you’d think, right? This would also be a fun way to make some embroidered hair accessories or brooches, don’t you think?

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6 Comments

Dom

LOVE THESE!
I wish I had one of those awesome machines!
But I guess the same idea could be done with hand stitching too. đŸ™‚
Thanks for sharing!

Dom.
Craftedblog.com

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