First Design - Folded Ribbon Coasters

I was facinated by some of the folding ribbon blocks that I had seen online, and have decided to embark on a coaster-making spree. I've also had an urge to explore designing something of my own. To that end, I designed a 4" square paper-pieced folding ribbon coaster.

The first step was to design the paper piecing pattern. Since we don't have a printer setup at  the moment, I drafted it on 1/4" graph paper and made four copies. The strip is 1" wide.

And then cut the materials.

Once I had finished sewing the middle section, it looked like hell!

Once I cut off the excess to a 1/4" seam allowance, it really started to take shape.

The dark purple fabric with the flowers had sections that are dark purple, black, and gold. I added a half inch border to each side of the ribbon.

And then adding an inch of the light tonal purple. I used the light purple as the backing as well, leaving a 2 or so inch opening on one of the solid sides to insert the batting.

Once I had the batting inside, I sewed up the opening and voila! I added stitch in the ditch top stitch between the light purple and dark purple strips to bind the layers.

I'll work up a proper pattern soon!