Sunflower Moss Coaster Intro: ✨ 

 

What you'll find inside your kit:

 

Transferring your Stencil

Your first step is to transfer your coaster design from the stencil onto your latch-hooking canvas. To do this you'll need your canvas and a marker of some kind. We recommend using a sharpie or similar permanent marker, but a regular pen or even coloured pen will work just fine.

Simply lay the canvas on top of your stencil and use the marker to trace the design behind it. The stencil matches our design with the smaller shapes roughly indicating where we will stitch each type of 'moss' in the following steps.

Feel free to get creative with the shape of your design, as your coaster doesn't have to be exactly like the stencil. You could make it a little larger or smaller depending on how you'd like to use it. Just remember to leave a 1/2 inch space between your coaster shape and the edge of the canvas.

TIP: Why not move the smaller shapes around within your coaster? You can get creative with the layout.

 

Step-By-Step Guide

Below you'll find each of the steps to making your coaster, with recommendations on the order to stitch each element. If you're a newbie to crafting, it will be worth following this step-by-step guide, so that you can get comfortable with the techniques and tools used in this kit.

If you want to create your own variations, you can stitch each section in whichever order you want! Don't feel constrained by our guidelines.

Step 1: Bobbles (using orange bobble yarn)

Step 2: Latch-Hooked 'Hair' Moss (using lighter and darker orange milk yarn)

Step 3: Feather Yarn Grass (using soft brown, light green and pale yellow feather yarn)

Step 4: Feather Yarn Shading (using light green and pale yellow feather yarn)

Step 5: Making Sunflowers (using yellow, brown and green pipe cleaners)

 

You can also use the image below to see the details of each element on your coaster.

Step-By-Step Video Guide

This video will give you a step-by-step overview of exactly how to finish your Sunflower coaster! If you're already familiar with the techniques used for moss kits, this video will be the perfect guide to help you finish.

This video will show you the steps, but it is NOT a tutorial for the techniques. For detailed tutorials, please use the videos below. Each step will have a detailed tutorial attached so that you can fully understand the technique if this is your first time making a mossy creation. 

1. Weaving Bobbles

To start your coaster, you'll be stitching the textured Bobbles that sit at the top of your coaster, to the left and right corners. You'll be using your orange bobble yarn and your latch-hook tool for this step. Follow the video tutorial below to learn the technique.

For your sunflower coaster, you wont need many bobbles to fill out each corner space because the bobbles are so bulky that they cover quite a lot of ground. For your left side you'll need around 4x pieces of your yarn (each piece has 2x bobbles on it) and for your right side you'll need around 5x pieces of your yarn.

2. Creating Latch Hooked 'Hair' Moss

This next textured section will be familiar to you if you've done one of our latch-hooking kits before. This time we use a slightly different technique to latch hook our yarn to look soft and 'hairy'.

You'll be using your lighter and darker orange coloured milk yarn to create your latch-hooked 'hair' yarn. Take one end of each yarn colour and cut it into equal pieces using the video below. You'll be using 2x pieces per stitch to give a more dense feel - one lighter orange and one darker orange piece. In order to make 2x pieces more manageable we use a different style of latch-hooking with this hook.

TIP: Cutting Your Yarn

• Because this coaster has a whole lot of 'hair' moss, you can use our yarn cutting tool for trimming your yarn pieces to get it snipped even faster. You simply wrap your yarn around the tool and use a pair of sharp scissors to cut down the groove of the tool. This will cut perfect 6cm pieces every time!
• A homemade alternative is to make a cardboard template. This won't be as easy to cut as our tool, however its super handy in a pinch! Cut out a piece of cardboard that is approximately 4cm/1.5inches across and 5 inches long. Take your milk yarn and wrap it around and around the 1.5 inch length of the cardboard, once its covered take your scissors and cut all along one edge. You'll be left with a bunch of 3 inch pieces! How easy was that?!

Trimming: You can either trim your latch-hooked knots as you go, or all at once at the end. We recommend giving them a very small trim first, and if you're unhappy with the length trimming them again. You can always cut your yarn shorter, but if you trim it too much on the first snip, you cant add the length back again! So snip wisely.

3. Weaving your Feather Yarn Grass

Now it's time to weave in the Feather Yarn 'Grass' on your mossy coaster, this section will be the flat area that you'll rest your mug on if you're planning on using it as a functional coaster. Our Sunflower coaster only uses three shades of yarn. Start with your soft brown feather yarn to stitch the top two shapes. Then fill in the upper light green section, followed by the pastel yellow section. Finish off with the smaller light green section at the bottom of your coaster.

When you are filling in the brown and upper light green sections, remember to weave under the edges of your bobbles as well! This will ensure the bulk of your coaster is covered securely and you wont have any gaps.

Follow the below video tutorial to learn how to weave your grass section. Its a very simple technique, using your weaving needle you'll be stitching back and forth to cover the canvas section.

 

4. Weaving your Feather Yarn Shading

This quick step will add a bit of extra detail to your soft and feathery grass sections, by adding a couple of lines of shading to the bottom of your piece. This step is totally optional! Give it a go and if you prefer the clean look of your grassy shapes instead, you can always remove these lines.

Use our image below as a guide.

You're going to be using your pastel yellow and light green feather yarn to make contrasting running stitches close to where the two shapes meet on the lower right side of your coaster. This technique uses the exact same skills as your weaving above, however this time you're adding extra woven stitches on top of the grass that is already there. Simply use your needle to make 5-7x little stitches along the edge line of your shapes. Tie off your yarn in the same way as shown in the video above.

Begin Backing Your Coaster - Sewing Down Canvas

Before moving onto step 5. you'll want to begin the process of backing your coaster! Backing your coaster involves 2x steps and usually we leave both until the very end, however completing the first half of the backing process now will make it much easier to attach your tulips afterwards.

Start by trimming the edges of your white canvas, with approximately 1 inch of space from the edge of your coaster edges. Take your white thread and begin roughly sewing down the edges of your canvas so that they sit nice and flat on the back of your coaster. Watch the first part of the below video to see this process in detail.

And thats it! Now your coaster will be it's final size and you're ready to add your tulips.

5. Making Pipe Cleaner Sunflowers

Woohoo! You've officially made it to the best part, creating your joyful pipe cleaner sunflowers! And there's now only a couple more steps before you've finished your adorable mossy creation.

Creating your Sunflowers will add some 3D dimension to the back of your coaster, and create a wonderful layered effect mimicking a real cottage garden! Using the sunny yellow, soft brown and light green pipe cleaners included in your kit, watch the video below to learn the technique.

TIP: There are a few variations of your Sunflowers that you might want to consider!

• Rounded or Pointed Petals: Making your petals more pointed will be more accurate to a real sunflower, however keeping them more rounded will give a cuter look. It's up to you which you prefer!
• Size of Middle: Your brown sunflower middle can be as large or as small as you like. A larger circle is more accurate to how a sunflower looks however if you want more yellow to be visible on your piece you might want to make your middles smaller.
• Positioning of Leaves: In my tutorial I've shown you how to make 2x equal sized leaves for each flower - but you can make more or less if you like! As mentioned in the video, if you want to use your leftover materials to make a fifth flower you can create less leaves for a couple of your sunflowers so that the green pipe cleaner stretches further. You can also angle and position your leaves in any direction.

If you're new to making pipe cleaner objects, it can take a bit of time to get used to. Remember that your sunflowers don't need to be perfect to look really amazing from afar. Just follow the tutorial and trust the process - they're sure to look incredible!

 

Backing your Coaster

Congratulations on finishing the main part of your coaster! Now you're onto the home stretch, its time to finish the back of your coaster.

You've already done half of the work backing your coaster, so now its time to glue or sew down your felt! If you're using it as a decor piece or to hang on the wall, it may be better for you to leave it at it's current stage. It will be easier to hang on a wall hook if the back is free from felt.

Refer to the second half of this video for finishing up your backing.

 

Sewing your Backing

Our kit includes all of the supplies you need to sew the backing of your coaster.

To sew your fabric you'll want to trace the shape of your coaster so that you can cut out the felt fabric to match the shape. You can do this with a pencil or pen.

You will then need to pin your felt backing to your coaster so you can begin sewing the edges. You can do this by using sewing pins, bulldog clips or even tacking the back with a hot-glue gun. I find bulldog clips the easiest method of holding my coaster to the felt.

Using 3-strands of your cotton thread, begin stitching your canvas to your mossy coaster using a whip stitch. This just means that you will whip your thread around and around the edge of your coaster as you go around. Don't worry if your stitches don't look perfectly neat, they'll blend into the grass on your coaster and won't be visible when you're finished.

Gluing your Backing

If you have any fabric glue handy or a hot glue gun then you can also glue the backing of your coaster. We've included a glue stick for a standard craft hot glue gun, as well as a glue paddle if you have fabric glue.

To glue your fabric you'll simply place fabric glue across the middle of your felt square and place your coaster on top. Allow it to dry so that the coaster is secure - you may want to put a heavy book on top of your coaster to add pressure. Once it's dry you can take a sharp pair of scissors to cut around the coaster. 

You can then top up the glue on the edges, if any sections are lifting up. Easy as that!

 

Thank you!

I hope you've loved creating your very own moss coaster creation! All of these tutorials are personally written and filmed by me - Nakisah - the founder of Craft Club. I always love hearing from customers (whether you loved your experience, or there was something you'd like to give feedback on) so please come say hi at hello@craftclubco.com or send us a DM over on Instagram @craft.club.co.

I'm always working on ways to improve our kits so that they are as easy as possible for our incredible customers! So all feedback is welcome (but please be nice haha).

Nakisah x