Oh My Aching Back: Heating Pad Denim Refashion

I’ve been suffering from a sore neck and shoulder for several days. It occurred to me that my purse just might be the cause.

This thing weighs a ton!

So I weighed my purse, and guess what… it weighs a whopping 10 pounds!

No wonder my shoulder’s been killing me!

Luckily for me, I found a solution for my aching back in the book  99 Ways To Cut, Sew & Deck Out Your Denim by Faith Blakeney, Justina Blakeney & Ellen Schultz.

The solution is “Number 10,” which shows how to make a heating pad out of the pant leg of a pair of jeans, which is awesome because I have tons of jeans and jean scraps.

Here’s why I have all of those jean scraps:

A quilt!

I made my oldest son a denim quilt for Christmas. He loved it! It’s super warm. (I kinda want one for myself)

Anyway, back to the project…

I just happened to have a pair of pants perfect for the job, and a couple bags of rice to boot.

Supplies!

After I got everything together that I needed, I got busy cutting off that pant leg.

Snip snip!

Next, I sewed up the end of the pant leg.

Sew it closed.

Then cut off the excess material…

snnnniiiip!

I wanted  5 rice compartments (you can have as many as possible) to my heating pad, and I wanted to make sure they were even. So I measured the length of the tube, and divided that by 5 (since I wanted 5 compartments). Using a chalk pencil, I marked lines on the denim tube where I would be sewing the compartments closed.

Marking the sections.

Then I filled the bottom of the jean tube with rice, stopping at about an inch below the bottom line, and then sewed right across that line.

Sewing!

I then repeated the process of filling each section with rice ,and then sewing across each line until all the tubes were sewn shut.

All done?
Not quite!

There was extra material left over at the end of the tube, so I trimmed it a bit, and then folded it over and stitched it down.

Trimmed

Making a new hem.

All Done!

My lines aren’t all straight, but what the heck, it works!

The book said to put the heating pad in the microwave for 15 seconds, but my microwave is small and not very powerful, so 2 -2 1/2 minutes worked perfectly for me!

nuke it up!

My neck and shoulder are feeling better already!

aaaaahhhh!

Special thanks to my photographer…

He’s silly.

Since I still have half a bag of rice left over, (and tons of denim scraps) I thought I could use up the rice in making hand warmers.
Check out my Facebook page for the finished results. I’ll have them done in time for Valentine’s Day. (I thought I’d make them heart-shaped and give them as gifts to the kiddies.) I’m also doing a giveaway on my Facebook page once I hit 30 likes, (as I’m typing this, I’m currently at 29 likes) so like my page while you’re at it and you just might win!

QUESTIONS:

What is your best remedy for an aching back?

Have you made any refashions from denim? What did you make?

I hope you enjoyed today’s refashion!

Thanks for stopping by! Oh, by the way…I’m having fun as @TheMadMama on Twitter. I’d love to connect with you there : )

~Jen

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