How-to: Sew a Rice Pillow to Use as a Heating Pad or Cold Pack

Even back before I was a crafty lady, I nevertheless was able to make myself a rice pillow. It consisted of…ahem…a tube sock filled with rice and tied off at the top, and bless its heart for being so ugly, but it worked great. I heated it up or chilled it down and used it for all kinds of aches and pains, including the birth of my older daughter, and I only got rid of it by passing it on to a dear cousin who was pregnant, so that she could make use of its good labor mojo.

And then I turned into a crafty lady, and I made our family a much larger set of much cuter rice pillows.

Rice pillows are a mainstay in our family’s natural first aid kit. Microwaved for a minute, they turn into a heating pad perfect for anything from menstrual cramps to chilly footsies on a cold winter night. Frozen for an hour, they’re cold packs, great for everything from sore muscles to feverish foreheads. They’re weightier than either store-bought heating pads or cold packs, which allows the temperature to penetrate, and they’re made of comfy, soft, snuggly flannel. Add in a cutesy print or two, and you have the perfect comfort tool for a myriad of remedies.

Read on for the step-by-step instructions for making your very own rice pillow in your own cutesy print:

One of the nice things about making your own rice pillow is that you can make it any size that you like. You want to make it larger than a bean bag, so that it has some heft to it, but otherwise it’s up to you.

I typically make my rice pillows about 4″ x 8″ to serve my own family of people both little and big. When I make these for my pregnant friends to use in their labors, I usually make them about twice as long in order to fit around a big ole’ pregnant belly.

After you’ve picked a good size, cut your fabric to that width plus 1/2″ (assuming 1/4″ inch seams), and that length plus 1″.

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