Nerdify Your Morning Brew with These DIY Legend of Zelda Felt Coasters

My completed coasters in action.

The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite video games series, so when I set out to make some felt coasters, it was one of the first themes that came to mind. With a huge number of games in the series and several artistic styles, the inspiration you can derive is expansive.

Wool-blend felt works well for coasters because of the absorbent nature of wool and its easy use (it cuts well, it doesn’t fray, and you can sew it by hand). I like to buy my felt sheets from Benzie Design, which has very nice quality and gorgeous colors. This project is probably somewhere between beginner and intermediate, since there are a couple different skills at work, including drawing, hand sewing, and embroidery. Each of those only requires basic knowledge and basic skills, but combining them takes a little extra. Still, I am confident that you can successfully create your own coasters with a little care and this tutorial!

What You’ll Need

• wool felt sheets in turquoise, brown, white, yellow, green, and light green
• DMC thread in a darker yellow than the felt and matching turquoise, brown, green, and white
• scissors
• freezer paper
• ruler
• printer paper
• pencil
• iron
• sewing needles

How to Do It

1. First you’ll need to develop patterns for the coasters using the printer paper. For the purpose of example, I’ve created two based on Link’s outfits from Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild. I use a lot of oversized mugs for my tea, so I went with a rather large frame of 4 by 4½ inches for my coasters. I then added triangles to suggest the sleeves and added the details and designs to make them look like the tunics from the games. You can adapt the base tunic shape for any of Link’s outfits from any of the games.

Tip: It’s best to simplify any complex designs, since you don’t want too many pieces, which would make very bumpy or uneven coasters.

I picked these outfits because they were bright and interesting, but it’s easy to adapt the basic shape for any of Link’s tunics.

2. Trace the various parts of your pattern onto the freezer paper. (I used a sunny window to trace my pattern pieces.) Layers are important for these coasters, as the felt sheets themselves are a little thin, so try to work in whole pieces rather than cutting tiny sections just for the visible bits. The images below should give a better idea of what I’m talking about. Make sure to trace the pattern onto the matte side of the freezer paper (as opposed to the waxy side).

Make sure to trace the pattern pieces to the correct side of the freezer paper, and try to use larger pieces instead of breaking the pattern down into small sections.

3. Iron the freezer paper to the felt. This doesn’t take much more than a quick pass with the hot iron. The waxy coating on the back of the freezer paper will melt a little and stick to the felt, which will make cutting the pieces and adding embroidery easy.

With my iron on high, it took me just a couple seconds to iron my paper to my felt.

4. Embroider the swirl onto the belt buckle of Wind Waker Link and the sword pattern to Breath of the Wild Link. I used a simple stem stitch to do the embroidery on both pieces. Embroidery thread has six strands to it; I use two for the embroidery (see image below). You can sew straight through the freezer paper—we’ll deal with that later.

Tip: Keep your embroidery to the upper layers of the coaster so that you can hide the ugly backs of the stitching with more felt.

Embroidery thread is composed of six strands. You can separate them to get the appropriate thread thickness for what you’re doing.

5. Cut out the pieces out of the felt. If your embroidery goes to the edges of the pattern, take care here so you don’t cut through your stitches or the knots at the back.

6. Now you can remove the freezer paper, which should peel off the felt easily. Use your needle to score the paper near any embroidery to help it tear away easier, but still take care—stitches can get caught on the paper and pull out. It just takes a little patience and care to tear it away around the embroidery without messing up your stitches.

Here are all my pattern pieces embroidered and cut out with the freezer paper removed.

7. Start sewing the layers together, starting with the top layer and working down. For example, with Wind Waker Link, I first sewed the brown belt to the green piece, then added the yellow buckle, and then sewed the whole thing to the light-green piece. I used two strands of the corresponding DMC thread and a simple whip stitch appliqué. Try to keep your stitches even and small, as that will hold the pieces together the best and will look nice.

Use two strands of embroidery thread to stitch the pieces together. Sew the details on first and the backmost tunic piece on last.

8. When you finish stitching, you can hide away the ends of the thread between the felt layers so you don’t have visible knots. Pass your needle perpendicularly through your stitches back and forth a couple times, then trim the thread.

Hide the ends of your thread between the felt layers. I zigzagged my thread twice to make sure it stayed secure.

That should do it! You can adapt this tutorial to fit your skill level as well; if you don’t feel confident with embroidery, you can pick outfits that won’t use it (Link’s Ocarina of Time tunics are simple enough) or paint on the designs using acrylic paints. It is also possible to use a hot glue gun to assemble the coasters, though I don’t recommend it since hot glue can create hard bumps or bleed through the felt and leave it discolored. If you feel ambitious, you can also scale up the difficulty and design other shapes beyond the simple tunic. Maybe some of Link’s gear or other objects from the games. Or something not from the Legend of Zelda at all—there are lots of possibilities!

I hope this tutorial inspires you to create something fun for yourself!