University of Michigan Themed Heat Therapy Rice Bags

There's been a fair bit of crafting going on in the house the past few weeks, but most projects are still works in progress that should be done in the next two weeks.  The one completed project so far is a set of rice bags I made by request from one of my coworkers.  His three year old dog has a recent leg injury and needs to have heat and cold applied each day after his walk.  My coworker had a similar bag filled with beans, but it quickly became a destroyed cat toy and a replacement was needed.  He selected a University of Michigan print and provided 10 pounds of rice.  10 pounds!  I gave one of the 5 pound bags back.

In order to make it easier to switch from hot to cold, I made three bags.  One can be kept in the freezer when not in use, the other can be warmed in the microwave.  The third is a backup in case one of the first two somehow become a cat toy.

The finished bags are 6"x6" squares.  There is about two cups of dried rice in each bag.  I trued up the fabric, and while the fabric was folded into four layers I cut the fabric 6.5" from the squared edge.  I opened the cut fabric by one fold, so there were just two layers.  From this, I cut off the selvage edge and cut three 6.5" sections.  I used the top and bottom layers of each cut for the same bag, so the size and shape would match up perfectly.

I pinned the corners of the two pieces for each bag together, right sides together.  Then I began sewing from the middle of one side all the way around with a 1/4" seam allowance, leaving about 1" of space to flip the bag inside out and fill with rice.  I attempted to clip the edges with some cheap pinking shears from a beginners sewing kit I purchased a few years back, but gave up and pulled out my Fiskars shears.  Good cutting tools are worth every penny.   Once the edges were trimmed, I pressed the seams to set them and to make it a bit easier to turn the bag and get the corners to pull out properly.  The 1" opening was a bit tight to flip the bag right side out, but it was doable and minimized the amount of whip stitching I had to do to close the bag.  I used a handy paper plate that has been rolled and taped into a cone shape by Lee to fill the bag with rice.  Once filled, I whip stitched the gap closed.  I strongly recommend listening to "Whip It" by Devo whenever whip stitching is required.  It makes the experience so much more entertaining.

The bags were completed pretty quickly as I made about a dozen hand sized bags to keep all of my Uncles hands warm last winter.  My cutting, sewing, hand-sewing skills, and sewing machine have all improved since then, which I would guess helped this project go as smoothly as it did.  I sure hope the recipients recovery goes just as smoothly.