Gift Idea 5: Heated Eye Mask

Christmas keeps comming closer, as inevivible as the passage as, well, time.  With it comes more Christmas presents.  I made this eye mask out of recycled materials for my grandmother who has eye problems.  If you have all of the materials on hand, and hour can see several made.

Materials for One Eye Mask:

1.  Burda Style Pattern Marcel #7997.  This is a free download, and the entire pattern should fit on a standard piece of paper.

2.  Two pieces of soft fabric approx. 9" by 5".  I got enough fabric for 3 masks from the front of a cotton dress shirt (the rest of the shirt had already been repourposed as napkins.
3.  Flat batting in the same amounts as the fabric above (optional).  I used cotton batting let over from a quilt, but fleece, or rescused batting would work well too.

4.  50" to 60" of ribbon, .75" to 1" wide, cut in half.  Deside on the total amount of ribbon you want to use based on head size. I used the ribbon from a kids store's elaborate gift wrapping.  One package yielded more than enough ribbon.

5.  Rice.  I used about 0.125 pounds of inexpensive long grain rice.  You can probably find enough in your pantry.

Instructions:

If you know how to sew, this will probably be a no brainer, but Burda Style has no instructions on this pattern (as of this writting), so....

1.  After printing and cutting out the Marel pattern, pin the pattern piece to your fabric (with the grain of the fabric), mark the side openings noted on the pattern on your fabric, and cut the fabric in pattern.  Do this so that you get two pieces of fabric in pattern shape, then do the same with the batting.

2.  Make the following fabric/batting sandwich; (Beginning on the bottom) batting, fabric (right side up), fabric (right side down), batting.  Then stitch around the edges of the mask with a 5/8" seam allowance, leaving the spaces that were marked "ribbon" on the pattern open.

3.  Turn your "sandwich" inside out.  The fabric should now be on the outside, the batting on the inside.

4.  Insert one of the ribbons about 1" into the ribbon slot, fold the fabric around the ribbon slot inward to that it looks as if it had been sewn with the rest of the eye mask.  Sitich the ribbon in place very close to the edge of the mask. DO NOT SEW THE OTHER RIBBON IN PLACE AT THIS TIME.

5.  The ribbon slot on the other end of the mask is still open.  Use this opening to pout in your rice.  Make a funnell with a spare bit of paper, stick the small end in the ribbon slot, and pour the rice in the large end.  Pour in enough rice so that half of the eye mask is full.

6.  With the rice at the opposite end of the mask, attach the 2nd ribbon as shown for the first in step 4.

~Happy Holidays

Edit:  If you would like to heat the eye mask, place it in the microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute.  Test it's temperature on the sensitive part of your arm before placeing it on your eyes.  It should be warm, NOT hot.