Rice, Rice, Baby

Just a few quick presents for my friend Hippie Girl on her birthday last night. We had a fantastic adult "girls only" slumber party. Plenty of organic beer, silly games, vegan chocolate cake & laughter, oh the laughter. Definitely one of the best birthday parties I've been to in a while.

Both of these are stash buster patterns. I whipped these out along with a pair of lounge pants & matching headband for myself to wear in about 4 hours. That's not counting the time to futz around with a few random other things in the sewing room that I decided to half start yesterday as well.

The top is a weighted eye pillow. Filled with rice & lavender. The front side is some of the last hand dyed fabric in the blue & purple color-way. The back was L's idea, blue fleece. It makes that side very soft and comforting when you are meditating with it on your eyes.

Below that is a rice heat pack. Originally I was going to fill it with rice & sage, since sage is a female herb. However, the sage I have is fresh, not dried. So that too was filled with lavender. There is an inner filled pillow and an outer case that can be laundered. Especailly nice after you've passed it around to all your friends and everyone has rubbed their noses & cheeks into it because it smells so nice.

To make it a little more "gifty", even though she asked for no gifts, I made a little card. It's about 1/2 of a small note card, cut in half to about 2"x3". I really quickly cut out a seated cardinal and free motion stitched a branch below him. He's attached to the card with my new favorite secret weapon, Wonder Under. I love how you can cut & stick anything with it, yet its not nearly as messy as spray mount.

I like these two little projects. I'm thinking I'll make a few more of the rice heat packs for people like my mother, who uses a cherry pit heat pack frequently. I also might like to make a few more for around our own house. we only have 1 and when it's in use or not to be found, we usually resort to heating up one of the bean bags that I made L for her silks! Not exactly the picture of luxury.