Heating and Cooling Pad

Pregnancy makes the body hurt.  I mean the whole body sometimes.  This pregnancy has granted me the gift of frequent, knock-me-out headaches.  I've never been a migraine sufferer, but these bad boys are as horrible as I have always imagined migraines to be (not to mention, nearly as incapacitating! Jared will back me up on this one).

One piece of relief that I have discovered after much trial and error: icing my neck and head.  This tells me that my headaches might be tension-related... but the only thing remotely resembling an ice pack in our house is a really old bag of frozen corn that Jared and I have both used as an ice pack enough times that I'm sure the corn isn't possibly edible anymore.  It has worked for the most part, but really isn't big enough to span the entire back of a pregnant lady's neck.  I have made "heating pads" in the past, using rice, and I figured the same concept can be used for a cooling pad. 

My past heating pad projects were extremely time-consuming, frustrating and not all that successful.  But I did learn a few things that made this project a little bit easier.

Firstly, I actually measured my fabric. This is a step that I often (gasp!) skip entirely.  Lazy! I ended up cutting these to be 8x18 inches.  I cut 2 pieces of an old T-shirt for the lining, a piece of soft fleece for the back and a piece of pretty cotton for the front.  This will allow for one side to be warmer or cooler than the other side, based on temperature preference. 

I sewed my lining first, like this: (leaving one whole side open for filling with rice).  I didn't bother measuring the spaces, but just eyeballed to make sure they were somewhat evening spaced out. 

 

Then I filled each space with rice.  I filled the spaces about 3/4 of the way full (maybe slightly fuller) so that the pad would lay nicely on my neck.  This made the final sewing step a little trickier, but it's totally worth it. I taped a piece of printer paper into a makeshift funnel (because, strangely, we don't own a real one).  I used the cheapest, regular old white rice I could find at the store.

Then I sewed up all the openings so each rice space became a nice little rice pillow.

The final sewing step was pinning and sewing all the layers together.  I pinned them in this order:

Top: Fleece, "pretty" side down
Middle: Cotton, "pretty" side up
Bottom: Rice-Filled Lining.  Since this is an interior layer, I don't really care what it looks like.  So there is no "pretty" side :)

Then I sewed the border, making sure to catch all three layers and leaving a decent sized opening for turning right side out.

Once I turned it all right side out I stitched up the opening.  And done!

Jared is out of town today, and my only other human model wasn't being very cooperative...

So I asked an old friend to step in... I actually think his head is slightly bigger than mine, so he was a perfect model.