Worth Repeating...A Great Gift Idea

I've posted this before but it's worth repeating.

These Therapeutic Rice Bags are under $4 each to make.

You won't want to make just one. Because, you'll want at least one for yourself!

It's sch an appreciated gift -- anyone I've ever given them to really likes them.

In fact, a friend of mine that was given one last year, ordered one for each of her adult kids and her mother for Christmas this year. She's going to "stuff their stockings"...!

They are fairly easy to make.

The place mats are sold at Wal-Mart and are perfect for this project. The reason is that they are firm and hold the rice well, and stay put where you need them.

First, remove any stickers or tags.

Next, fold the place mat in half the long way. Smooth it out. Feel those ridges? Those are going to come in so handy! Pin each end of the place mat at the upper corners only, as shown here. Go to the sewing machine and sew each end shut, reinforcing your seam at each end.

Now, take out your handy-dandy hem gauge and place a pin at approximately every three inches. Only one pin is needed at the top; approximate intervals will be fine for your stitching lines.

See the fine grooves in your place mat? Use those lines to stitch vertically! What could be easier?

Start at the right and work your way to the left side of the bag and continue to stitch each of your little sections off by following with your needle that little groove all the way down, not forgetting to reinforce your stitching at both the top and the bottom.

If you start your stitching at the right side of your place mat, you can roll it up as you work your way to the left until you have stitched all your vertical lines.

(These little sections will hold your rice, which will hold the heat, which will then be applied to your achey-breaky parts.)

Once all the stitching is done at both ends, and in the three inch intervals, hold your rice bag up in a 9 x 13" cake pan, and use a funnel with a fairly wide opening to pour approximately one cup of rice into each three-inch section.

Do not fill all the way to the top, you'll need some room for give and some room to stitch it shut. I left about two thumb-widths empty at the top.

Then, once each section (about one cup per section) is filled, stand your rice bag up in a 9 x 13 inch cake pan.

If you overfill, the best way to remove excess rice is to take it out with a spoon.

Try to get each section filled to the same level as the one next to it. Shake gently from time to time so the rice will settle.

Use lots of pins so the rice doesn't escape and get into your sewing machine.

Now, take straight pins and pin halfway down the length of the top opening and flip it over and pin the other half on the back side. The reason for that is because you have to start stitching it shut from the middle and go out to the edge. So, pinning all the way down one side won't work.

Stitch the top side that was pinned, starting at the halfway point. Remove pins.

Stitch the back side that was pinned in the other direction, and once stitched, remove pins.

Don't forget: reinforce your stitching at the beginning and the end of the seam that you make to sew the top of the bag shut!

Finally, pne more reinforcement on the long seam we made to shut the bag. Start at the bottom of one corner of your bag, and start a continuous line of reinforcement stitching.

All done, all reinforced.

Ready to use!

(Wasn't that easy?)

Heat the rice bag from 1.5-2 minutes, just be careful.

Apply that handy gift to your nearest and most achey body part.

Go forth. Go nuts! Buy place mats. Buy rice! Lots and lots Louisiana rice. And make rice bags. Your friends and family will love you for it!

Approximate cost per bag: $4 (Place mat 2.25 + tax, rice approximately $2 worth per bag, about two pounds per.)

Approximate time start to finish: half an hour or less.

************

I always roll these up, tie with a ribbon, and attach a cute tag or a label that tells the recipient how to use it.

The tag says something like this:

"Therapeutic Rice Bag

Keep in the freezer to use as a cold compress or...

When needed as a heating pad, heat in the microwave on a plate for one to one and a half minutes and apply to your ache or pain. Should hold heat for a half hour to forty five minutes. This bag contains rice, please do not get wet. Can be stored in freezer to use as a cold compress when needed."

And, one final note.... for all you quilters out there who know about the CHAIN sewing that makes repetitive stitching go so much faster, you can do that if you've got a pile of these to make. You'll save a lot of thread and a lot of snippin'....so go for it! I chained three to four at a time.

Just feed 'em through...

And pile 'em up....!

PS: At the time I bought the place mats, I also bought a table runner. With that I was able to make TWO draft dodgers for the old farmhouse entry doors. I will post those instructions soon. I am considering making windowsill draft dodgers for some of the farmhouse windows and the place mats are the perfect size.

Bandanna Blanket, A Cute & Clever Baby Gift!

It's been a while since you saw this sweet little man...my grandson, Levi Jack.

These pictures actually make my heart hurt...I miss the little guy so much.

Here, he still has his newborn look in his face, eyes, hair, skin...

and those sweet little lips.

Seventeen days old, just getting to know us, and we him.

So fresh, so new, so sweet.

The little blanket he's lying on was a gift from his great Aunt Lisa.

And it's made of bandannas, I thought you might like to see it--you might want to make one, too! It gets used every day at play time.

It's bright and colorful, and clever.

And it makes a quick and fun idea for a baby shower gift.

Aunt Lisa hand quilts these, and she makes these for babies all the time, it's her gift to all babies, the colors just get changed up...

if it's a girl she goes for the pinks, purples, yellows and turquoise and coordinating backing in flannel girly prints.

This one consists of two blue and two red for a total of four bandannas (larger is fine, but four makes a crib-sized quilt.)

The binding on this one is a coordinating cowboy print to the one that is on the quilt back....keeping with the theme for Levi's room of "retro cowboy".

(It would be great paired with burp cloths, made of the same flannel you use for backing the bandanna quilt, which I showed you how to make here.)

Jamie was so excited when she opened it at her baby shower.

It's THE gift that she said she hoped Aunt Lisa would make for the baby!

This blanket will be a keeper, for a long, long, time.

Bandanna Quilt Summary:

Buy four bandannas; two of each color or four different colors

Buy flannel to coordinate (two kinds if you like) one for backing, one for binding

Sew four bandannas together in the center

Form sandwich with backing, quilt top and quilt batting

Machine or hand-quilt the blanket

Attach binding, by hand or by machine

And, while we're looking at Levi, I thought I'd show you a couple pictures my husband took while he was "babysitting" Levi one night in August while they were all here in Michigan for my niece's wedding.

Grandpa had to give Levi a bath and get him ready for bed, so he rigged up a couple towels and made a way for Levi to lay down in our big bathtub. There wasn't room in the car for Jamie and Thad to pack all the things babies use on a daily basis; and Grandpa was so proud of his invention.

(Levi was two months, nine days in these photos.)

And Levi had his first experience of not being confined in the tub and splashed and kicked for a long time!

Look at those baby blues!

He even gave his grandfather a sweet little half-smile! ;-)

***

Tonight, my phone beeped; it was a video from Jamie of baby Levi.

It was the first time I heard him LAUGH, and it was so precious!

I am SO THANKFUL for modern technology, when my grandbaby is 750 miles from his Nana, instant video and pictures make me smile, every day.

Jamie and I have a tradition, since the baby was born, we call it

'picture of the day' and she tries to send me a picture on my phone almost every day

of the baby. It doesn't matter what he's doing, I love them ALL!

***

Hope you all have a really great Monday!

(It's the start to a brand new, fresh week!)

Feed Sack Chair Makeover

A couple months back, I bought a round oak kitchen table for the spot in our kitchen where our too-large table once sat. I loved the table, but our chairs were a little too big, too bulky, made that end of the room seem too heavy. I was willing to live with it, but...

One afternoon a couple weekends ago, I drove by a house in town on the way to pick up pizza, and sitting by a curb was a set of four matched oak chairs, exactly what I wanted...

And as the hand-lettered sign on the chair said, 4/$30, I couldn't believe it! I stopped and headed to the door, hoping no one else had already spoken for them. I was lucky, they were mine! I paid the money. Because I was driving the Suburban, I loaded them up and came home (after I picked up the pizza!).
It took me a few weeks, but one day our weather was rainy, dreary for the fourth day in a row, and I was stuck in the house again.

I went out and brought those babies in from the garage and started tearing the seats down.

Digging through my fabric stash, nothing seemed to pop out at me, I had gingham in blue and red, but gingham was already very prominent in the the kitchen, and you can over do a pattern like that in a small space.

I kept hunting, and none of the prints looked right. I didn't want to have to buy anything, I wanted to use what I already had! Lo and behold, in one stack of fabric I found some feed sacks; they're not actually old, but they looked great; they said "farmhouse"! to me.

They're from an elevator in a nearby town, and I'd picked them up at our neighbor's garage sale for a quarter apiece a couple years back.

(I have a few left, I wonder what they will become?)

I started by taking off the upholstery, and underneath I found an old, cracked mess of fake leather? To cover that and add some needed cushion, I went to my stash of useful items from garage sales and took out a twin mattress pad. It helped cover the brown so the darkness wouldn't show through and give the covering an even base...

(These are well worth the dollar they normally sell for at garage sales. I just wash them and stash them to have a couple on hand for projects like this. Much more useful and much cheaper than plain quilt batting for some projects, I use them for things like this all the time.)

I cut a piece to fit each chair seat and stapled it into place with the heavy duty staple gun.

I centered the feed sacks, cut them and stapled them to the chair cover and screwed all of the covers back into place! I treated them with a couple coats of Scotch Guard the next day when I could get outside.

The whole job took a couple of hours, start to finish! I just love how useful vintage items like these old chairs, are made to be reused and recovered for years and years.

These chairs are the perfect match for the table, and...

the chair covers are the perfect match for a farmhouse kitchen!

Chairs $30
Feedsacks $1
Twin mattress cover $1
$32 total cost!

Burp Cloth Bundles: A Tutorial

Just in case you'd like to make a pile of easy-peasy burp cloths to have on hand for baby gifts, I threw together a tutorial for you. I haven't shown the most fun part, and that is choosing the flannel (on sale this month at JoAnn for $2.49, which is regularly $5.99!).

This stuff is a dream to sew on; they call it "snuggle flannel" and finishes off so well. It's worth the wait for it to go on sale to stock up!

For a pattern, get a piece of freezer paper, tissue paper, or a piece of parchment to cut a rectangle 11 x 17" and use a cup, glass or a measuring cup to get a nice, rounded corner on each side.

Not only does it make these look professional, it makes the sewing go much faster when you don't have to stop to turn corners. Zzzzzippp....around the edge you go!

If you wanted to, you could cut six patterns so you could pin and cut a whole set out at once. Then store the pattern to use again next time!

Cut your pattern out....

You'll need to choose your flannel. For about six burp cloths, you will need one yard of a print, and one yard of a small pattern or solid to coordinate. The choice shown above is NOT a good one, because there is too much white and stains will show too well. I will use this one instead to make a rice bag.

This is the way to cut them out and pin them together: with right sides together. Mark a spot on each to leave an opening. I do that with a pin placed a different direction from the others (as shown in top center of photo).

Load a couple bobbins or ten and get going!

Sew one right after another, without stopping to snip threads and let the "chain" of burp cloths rest on your lap.

If you don't want to do that, just stop and start and cut and snip threads as you go, I won't tell anyone, and anyway, this ain't no NASCAR race!

Once every burp cloth has been sewn, taking care on each to leave an opening in order to turn right side out again, get your very favorite jammies on, get comfy in your chair and find something good to watch and start unpinning. Once they're all unpinned, snip threads and ....

Trim all seams.

Turn them all right side out, smooth them with your hand, making sure rounded corners aren't puckered and are sitting nicely.

I tried to do a close shot to show you my decorative stitch that goes around the edge of each. Here it's shown running over top of the place where I sewed the burp cloth shut.

Little gardening froggie burp cloths all ready to go to some sweet little baby girl!

( When you're all done, don't forget to clean your machine out good, underneath in the bobbin case will be all sorts of flannel fuzz....blow it out!)

I can't resist doing a few pastels, too!

As you can see, I've done quite a pile, really enjoyed catching up on some sewing.

Throughout the week, I've made steady progress (assembly line style) on replenishing my supply of handy baby gifts. You won't believe it, but I've given away three sets of these in the last couple of weeks!

(My girl stock was getting low, there's been a run on girls lately!)

So I thought I'd show you what the fun bundles look like, all ready to attach a gift card and a note and perhaps a sweet little gift chosen just for the new baby...

These should be enough to stock me up for another year.

This brown strawberry print for little girls was my favorite, and I'd love to find more, I bought all that my JoAnn had! This set went in the mail to Kansas a couple days ago to my daughter's sister and brother-in-law for their new baby girl.

I have another set ready to go out to my god-daughter this week for her baby boy coming in March.

I know of a certain little guy that's due in June that just might get these....

or maybe these...

I enjoy finding cute prints for the "top" and a coordinating print, usually polka dots or gingham that will coordinate for the back.

I make sets of six.

I fold three right side up and three back side up, so the bottom of the bundle looks like the picture below.

The tulling "ribbon" is also found at JoAnn, up in the bins near the register in my store. The reason I spend the money on this tulling is because it helps avoid gift wrapping ... these are too cute to cover up anyway and it's complete and ready to give just with this "ribbon".

To make the whole job more efficient this is how I do it:
I cut them all out.
I iron all of them.
I pin them all of them together while I sit and watch something.
I sew them all, in a chain, one set after the other.
Cut them all apart.
Snip threads.
Trim the seams.
Turn to the right side.
Pin all the openings with a pin.
Sew all of the openings shut, again in a chain.
Top stitch all of the burp cloths using accent color thread on the top.
(And I use a fancier stitch for the top-stitching, but you don't have to!)
Iron again if needed, it usually isn't.
Bundle into packs of six, three right side, three wrong side.
Tie them into bundles using whatever you have!
They're ready to give!!!!

"Don't stop 'til you get enough...don't stop 'til you get enough....don't stop til you get enough...."
--The King of Pop



Email me if you have any questions, these are the simplest and most enjoyable things to make and I love having them on hand, it solves the "what should I get the new baby" question.

Such cozy work, too!