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.

Jean Coasters

The good news is that I am finally posting about all of the projects I've done in the recent weeks. The bad news is that I hurt my wrist (probably due to the marathon knitting done at the hospital the other night), and that most of my crafting endeavors are out of the question until my wrist is feeling better. Since I have several blog back logged projects, I am considering it a blessing in disguise.

On with the show.

While it is still not technically summer, here in Florida we have already had one full week of temperatures bordering 100 degrees F. I am behind on clothes shopping for the kids, especially for my oldest, because she is not wearing hand me downs. On a particularly hot day when there were no shorts to be found, my DH took scissors to my DD jeans and made long shorts. Not wanting to throw away perfectly good material, I decided to make the remnants much needed coasters. The following is the result.

Process:
I simply cut the jean material into 4" x 4" squares. I did the same to some wool felt (the felt adds an element of waterproofness to the absorbency of the jean material). I layered the jean and felt, then did some simple, geometric machine quilting to attach the pieces. Voila!

Napkins, napkins everywhere

What can you make with nearly any piece of clothing past it's prime? A napkin of course.
Napkins range in size from a 16 to 18 inch square dinner napkin, 12 to 14 inches for a lunch napkin, to 4 to 6 inches for cocktail napkins. You can cut at least one square, of one of these sizes out of even baby clothing.

A little while ago my husband ripped a large gash in a nice button down oxford shirt. When I finially got around to cutting it up, I was suprised to find that I was able to cut 4 12" squares from the back and sleeves of the shirt that I can make into luncheon size napkins. The rest of the shirt should yield at least 4 more 4 to 6 inch squares for cocktail napkins. One of the finished napkins is pictured below.
How to do it:
1) Cut as many squares of the desired size as possible out of the ruined piece of clothing (make sure you cut the squares with the grain of the fabric, rather than at an angle to it. If the fabric is woven, and as thick as you feel a napkin should be you can simply stop here (woven fabric cut on the grain will unravel very little after washing).
2) I felt that my squares were too thin, so I doubled them up. You could then hem the pieces under, or stitch around the edges so that the pieces stay together and leave it at that. I decided to make mine a little more polished, and decided to use bias tape to finish the edges.
3) Bias tape can be found in any craft store; however, it can also easily be made out of any light weight woven fabric, and since this is all about reusing that is what I did.

how to make bias tape;
Tutorial
If you have any questions feel free to ask.

4) Pin the bias tape around the edge of your napkin, so that the bias tape encloses the edge of the napkin, then stitch around the edge of the tape.

Ta Da! A beautiful napkin.

Reuse

This is the start of something new! I really hate to waste things, but our disposable culture makes it not only necessary at times, but cool, to simply throw something in a land fill when we no longer have a use for it (think the swiffer sweeper pad - use and toss, or the latest digital gadget that costs more to fix than to buy anew). Well, I have decided that about once a week I will show you one of the ways in which I have made something into something new; however, this week, until next Friday, I will try to show a way in which I have reused every single day.

Without further ado, reuse of the dreaded bride's maids dress.
A little more than a year ago my sister in law got married, and asked me to be one of the bride's maids. The dresses she picked really were tasteful, but like nearly all bride's maids dresses really wasn't appropriate to wear ever again. That, and the fact that the wedding was only 1 month after I gave birth to my second child, meant that this dress was doomed to spend the rest of it's days in the back of my closet.

A few months ago was my sister in law's birthday. I find her difficult to shop for, as we are not terribly close, and our aesthetic differs considerably. I had recently made some pillows for my sister's new apartment, and thought that my SIL might like pillows for her new house, but which fabric to use? Then I realized, I already had fabric she liked. In fact I had yards and yards of fabric she had picked out. I had a bride's maids dress.

I ripped the seams on the dress (rather than cutting) to get the maximum amount of usable fabric out of the dress. The bodice area was not wide enough to provide usable fabric so I cut it off. I cut 4 15 inch squares from the remaining fabric, giving me materials for 2 14" square pillows with .5" seam allowance. Then I simply sewed up the sides, stuffed the pillow, and shut the opening. They turned out well if I do say so myself.

I will try to update with a picture of the dress if I can find one.