National Craft Month Challenge – Week 3

National Craft Month Challenge Week 3 – Break out the yarn and break out the fabric! Yarn – knit it, crochet it, wrap it, knot it, whatever. Not into yarn? Maybe fabric is your thing – cut it, sew it, glue it, braid it, whatever. It’s a fiberific good time this week!

I forgot how much I love to sew.

Notions make me all tingly!

Focusing! Okay – a couple of weeks ago I made this sweet little rice heating pad just to test run my new sewing machine (you can read about all of that crazy here).

Well, apparently these things multiple when you’re not looking.

And then they make little ones too!

Ohhh, I’ll admit it – these things are just addictive as hell to make! Over two nights I made 2 full size heating pads and 3 little eye pads. Easy-peasy sewing with super cute and useful results. And used they will be! Between my Aunt Terri, Uncle Phil, Charlotte and myself, we have headaches/migraines, back pain and more than our fair share of aches and pains. So a gifting they will go (minus one of those sweet little eye pads…in my nightstand it will live)!

Like my first diy heating pad, these are also filled with jasmine rice. Each large pad contains 3lbs of rice and the small pads used around 2 lbs total (maybe 2lbs, maybe less). None of these, however, are scented with any essential oil or any other fragrance. Two reasons for this: 1) the scent really didn’t last past the first or second heating in the microwave; and 2) when using these for headaches/migraine scents aren’t exactly what you’re looking for (a great point made by Charlotte). And to be perfectly honest, jasmine rice has a wonderful natural scent. It smells both sweet and earthy and it’s absolutely fabulous as is.

There are a number of tutorials online about how to make these. My favorite tutorial comes from Bevcooks. She does a great hand sewing version of these little numbers on her site (I did mine on my machine and added some topstitching). But, regardless of how you decide to sew them up, her tutorial is an awesome step-by-step place to start to get your own diy rice heating pad addiction flowing.

As with anything, having a cute assistant totally helps with the creative/crafting process.