How to hand-piece patchwork – simple coaster

When I was younger I often wondered how to make patchwork. Patchwork – for quilts, bags, clothing, home decor and more – can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. You can recycle scraps of old clothing, or make use of the many beautiful quilting fabrics now available. You can piece patchwork by machine or by hand. Today I’ll show you how to hand-piece patchwork, which, though time-consuming, is portable, relaxing, and produces an object you’ll be happy to treasure.

To make this coaster, you’ll need:

• small pieces of fabric, in 2-4 designs, plus around 12cm square for the backing. Try and choose fabrics which have a similar amount of ‘give’ – don’t mix knits with woven fabrics. Cotton prints are perfect.
• needle and thread
• pins
• ruler and pencil
• scissors
• iron

The old adage ‘measure twice, cut once’ is nowhere more true than with patchwork. The key to successful patchwork is to measure and mark your pieces precisely, so that they will fit together to make a smooth flat surface.

Use a pencil and ruler to carefully mark and measure four 5cm squares on the reverse of your fabric. Make sure all your angles are right-angles, and all your sides are the same length. If you want to make quite a few, you can buy stencils for common patchwork pieces, or make your own from thin card. Don’t draw your squares right next to each other – leave a 2cm gap to give you a seam allowance.

Cut out your squares leaving a 1/2-1cm seam allowance all round.

Put two squares together, right-sides in, making sure the pencil lines match up exactly. An easy way to do this is to place pins in the lines of one square, and then line up the pencil mark on the other square with the pins. When you’re sure they’re matched up, pin the two squares together.

Thread your needle, and knot the end of the thread. Start sewing – not at the edge of the fabric, but at the corner of your marked square. Make a couple of small stitches in the same place for added strength. Sew a simple running stitch to sew the two pieces together, taking care your stitches are small, even, and exactly on the line you marked. You should have around 8 stitches per inch. Finish sewing at the corner of the marked square – don’t sew on into the seam allowance. Finish the seam with a few stitches in the same place.

Sew all four seams in the same way to join your four squares together.

Finish by pressing all your seams flat. If you press them all in the same direction, you can get the corners to lie flat as you see in the photo.

Pin the backing to the patchwork, right-sides together, and sew together all round using the same small running stitch or by machine. Leave a gap of around an inch, so you can turn it right way out.

Turn your coaster right-side out, and whipstitch the gap closed. Press with an iron, and you’re done!

Once you have the hang of this, you can make all kinds of patchwork, remembering to always make sure your pieces are precisely marked and will fit together. So long as you’ve marked your pieces properly, and sew on the marks, your patchwork will turn out looking great.

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