The story behind the coasters

 I just made a set of these for my Grandma {for her birthday} so I thought I'd post a tutorial... but maybe I should start this off with a story from "behind the scenes".

Like every project I've been privileged to work on, these were so much fun to make! And not difficult either. {I'm thinking I should start a rating scale for the difficulty of a project instead of telling you all that they are easy. But truly, I like things that look amazing but are really simple to make so most of the projects I write about *really are* easy:)}

{from Ruche}

I made one of these coasters for the first time back at Christmas and, me being me, I was flying by the seat of my pants with no direction at all. {I should probably look up and follow directions more often} It started with this necklace I saw in Claire's {no I don't like Claire's but I was in there with the girls} that looked a bit like this one ===>

I saw it and was inspired to make one along the same lines for my sister for Christmas. Only I went on a way crazy route and did it funky so it ended up looking like this{I still love it}
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And then from that project I had leftover strips of fabric so I started braiding them and came up with these bracelets:

    

And then! As I was braiding fabric, braided rugs popped into my mind...and though I wasn't about to make one of those, I had a certain coffee drinker friend who I thought might appreciate a coaster for her mugs so-- I started stitching the braids together and...Voila! It worked! 

This is most likely NOT the correct way to make braided coasters {I've never even googled to find out about it so chances are, I'm completely wrong!} but it is one way, so if you're interested, hang around for the tutorial coming next:)
{Oh, and you now know how my creative thought process goes on winding bunny trails before stopping!}