The Much Requested Heating Pad

Remember how I told you awhile back that my sewing machine decided to stop working? A long repair vacation later, my little sewing machine is back and better than ever. Seriously - I should have taken the little guy in for maintenance a long time ago. May this be a lesson to all my fellow slackers - machines need love and care and maintenance. Now that we've got that cleared up, back to why I'm talking about the sewing machine. Allen used to have a heating pad that he loved. He would use it all the time and then we moved ... it became one of the many mystery losses of the move.
 
The Pinterest Project: Scented Rice Heating Pad
Scented Rice Heating Pad
 
He doesn't normally ask me to make him anything but he may have hinted about a million times about needing a new heating pad. I found a couple on Pinterest from The Green Wife and Elm Street Life and then sort of improvised through the rest. 
I had started this project before the sewing machine took it's vacation so I'm pulling from the back of brain on some of the details, so bear with me. Since I was making this for Allen I decided that it shouldn't be overly girly (I thought he'd frown on that) so I found about a 1/4 yard of a black printed fabric and cut it into a long rectangle. I folded it in half length-wise (right sides facing in) and pinned one of the short sides and the long side (not the fold side). Sew the short side as well as the long side together, I left about a 1/4 inch seam allowance, making sure to double stitch on the edges to secure it. Now you have a big inside-out tube with an opening at the top, right? Good. Turn it right-side out and set it aside. 


I had some lavender oil from another project so I decided to use that for the rice, but you can use whatever scent you like (or none at all). Pour your rice into a bowl and put several drops of the oil into the rice and stir it until it seems that the rice is slightly shiny and well mixed. After all the rice was mixed, I took my handy dandy tube of fabric and added about 1/4 cup of the rice to the bottom of the tube/bag and then pinned it to form a pocket. Sew right along the pins to seal the rice into it's own pocket and repeat this process all the way down the tube/bag until you get to the end, leaving about 1" inch to use to sew up the edges. 


At the very end of the neck warmer, I folded the inch overage twice and sewed along the edge to reinforce the end because of the weight that the rice causes. That's it. Stick this puppy in the microwave for a few seconds (Allen does about 45 seconds) and stick it on your neck and relax. You can also put it in the freezer and use it as a cold pack. Ahhhhhhhh, feel the stress relief! 


  Don't they look relaxed?? I'm sure it's the neck warmer (and not the Curious George on TV).