Rice Heating Bag

I needed a quick birthday present and wanted to make something this weekend.  I remembered I had bookmarked a tutorial on how to make Rice Heat Therapy Bags from Sew Mama Sew.  You can go to her tutorial here.

This is the material that I used for mine.  The tutorial uses velcro to close the outer case, but I used buttons, instead.

I used 2 different kinds of fabric for the trim.  I used 1/4" seams, pressed them, and top-stitched about an 1/8" from the seam. 

I {heart} the script fabric!!

(Starting out - - lining up the needle)

I just want to say that my new sewing machine is AWESOME!!!  It will even sew buttons on!!!  WTH??!!!  When they showed me at the store, I thought, I'll never use that!!  Well, I used it yesterday and it is CRAZY!! WOW!!!   Who knew???

(All done!!)

I also made my own labels for this project!  I'm not sure how long it will 'hold up' or how well it will wash, but it looks good now!!!



I taped a piece of scrap material to a piece of card stock and printed out what I wanted to say.  I experimented with different fonts.  This is Gigli, printed out 10 pt.   It went through the printer pretty well.  I've got a HP Deskjet D1520 printer.  I cut the material from the cardstock, and ironed it with a very hot iron.  I cut the labels, and then sewed one on.  I think it looks pretty good!!

The tutorial calls for 2 lbs of rice, which I figured to be about 5 cups.  This bag is a little smaller than what the tutorial made, so the inner bag is pretty full.  The next one I make won't be so full.  Mr. Inspiring said it's kind of hard.  I used Thieves oil in my rice.  (Young Living Oil - I used thieves A LOT.  I use it as an antiseptic - - like on those nasty zits I get every once in a while.  I also use peppermint oil.  I love peppermint oil!!  It's great for sore muscles or an upset tummy.  Those are my favorite oils!!)

Here are a couple others I made.  The one with plaid is the birthday present I needed and the other is going to go in a basket for the silent auction at the Breast Cancer Awareness dinner. 

(Made with leftover dropcloth fabric and an old shirt!)

A friend of mine is having a booth in a craft show at the end of October.  I figure I'll make a few of these for her booth - and use up a bunch of my scraps!  The rice was $2.98 for a 5 lb bag, and Walmart carries a 20 lb bag, too.  A relatively inexpensive project.  My friend is donating what she makes with her booth to Backstoppers, an organization for the families of police officers, that helps out with the bills if the officer is hurt or killed.  She's also donating a portion to the March of Dimes.  How much do you think I could sell one of these for?


Thanks for stopping by!!  Please let me know if you have any questions!!

Hugs ~~ Suz



I'm soo partying here:

Hello? I'm in the bathroom......

I haven't been posting much lately, and I'm sorry about that.  But now, I'm back, and I'm going to posting a few right in a row, and I'm sorry about that, too.... 

As you know, I've been working on my quilt.  I'm still quilting it, by hand, and I've got more than half of it done.  Hand-quilting, I believe, was the big thing that was holding me back from jumping into quilting.  I just have to say:  I love it.  I love it all.  Yay!!!

But that's not the only thing that's been keeping my from posting.  Nope.  For the past three and a half days, Miss C and I have been working on our main bathroom.  Do you remember the show "While You Were Out"?   That's what we've been doing. 

Mr. Inspiring left Sunday morning for a class in Iowa.  And you know what they say....  "While the cat's away, the mice will play"....   

I don't have any finished pictures to post yet because, frankly, the room itself isn't 'done'.  I didn't stop working until about 10:30 or so last night.  I need to clean it, then move the fun, decorative stuff back in.  And I need to make my shower curtain.  All that will be done tonight.  So for now, here's the before and during pictures.

When we moved into the house, the bathroom was boring.  Eight years ago, nobody was really using a lot of blues or turquois in their rooms, and there wasn't anything 'cute' you could that I wanted to try to do with 2 baby blue sinks, a baby blue toilet and a baby blue bathtub.  From the 60's.  They were gross.  Cracked. Nasty.  Yuck....   A couple of years ago, we had sink issues, and one of them started leaking.  So we replaced them with a couple of Bone colored sinks and got a new countertop.  Then I painted the room a different color.  It was a brownish tan, and when it went up, it just looked PINK to me.  To tame it down, I started to sponge paint a creamy tan color over it.  I didn't like that either.  So for the past couple of years, it remained not done.  It even still had the blue tape up around the window and doors and toilet paper holder.  I was unmotivated and it was ugly.

Here are the pictures of how it looked until Sunday.

Baby blue toilet.  Notice?  No baseboards.....

Nice, all one color kind of vibe, eh?

Are you diggin the nice cabinet?  Nice 60's kind of lines to it, wouldn't you say?  Well, it stayed, just got painted during the project!

And how about that half linoleum/half carpeted floor?  That metal strip in the center?  I found out what kinds of yucky things like to live there......  Dirt Catcher!!

Better shot of that nice cabinet.  Like I said - - it did stay!

AAhhh  there's that beautiful baby blue tub!!  Ain't she a beaut??

The shower curtain really did have all the colors in it.  But I hated that shower curtain!!  It got stained from WATER.....  Weird!!  Love that yucky caulking around the tub??  It's gone, too!!

This is a picture of the wall of the shower.  Instead of putting up concrete board and tiling it, someone contacted the local vanity company that made 'marble' bathroom sinks and countertops, and had them make 'walls' for our shower.  I think this is the item in particular that had me unmotivated.  What do you do with something like this?  What if we pull it out to replace it with tile?  Who knows what's back there and what kind of problems it will cause?  And how do you take that crap out, anyway??  (just so's you know?  the bathroom downstairs has a tiled shower.  they (i don't know who they is) actually put the tile on PLYWOOD.  Nope - - they didn't use anything waterproof.  They really put it on PLYWOOD.  Can you say DUMBASS????  We will be doing MAJOR renovation on that bathroom.  Nobody needs to use it right now, so we're not under the gun to get it done.

So that's my before.  I'll post during pictures in a couple of upcoming blogs.

Thanks for looking!!   Come back soon!

Hugs ~~ Suz

Guess What Came in the Mail Today??!!

On my last post, I told you that I won a sewing basket from Wantobe Quilter.  It arrived today!!!

Thank you, Madame Samm!!  I love it!!

This box was sitting on my front porch!!

Have you ever seen so many stamps on one box??  WOW - I sure hope you were able to use the self-stick stamps and didn't have to lick all of those!!! 

I opened the box up and found a ton of goodies!!   I love it all!!! 

Thank you so much!! 

Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!!


On another note, I've not been able to post very much the past week or sew.  I'm still working on my Breast Cancer quilt - - I'm hand quilting it.  First time - Evah!!   (Duh - - my first quilt would be my first time to quilt!!)  Before I ever tried it, I thought the task to be daunting....  take forever, never get it done....

But it is going a lot quicker than I anticipated and I love doing it.  The quilt has 25 blocks and each block is a 9-patch.  That means that I have 225 three and half inch squares....  I have 92 of them quilted!!  That means, in my way of thinking (and of course I'm right  *smile*) that I am 41% finished!!  And I have until the end of September to get it all done!!  In all honesty, I am such a procrastinator!!!  I am amazing myself with this task!!  Woot! Woot!! 

I'm not going to post any more pictures of the quilt until she's done!!  And then, when I do post the pictures, I'm asking that everyone be kind..........  and keep in mind - - it's my FIRST one!!!! 

Have a great day and weekend, everyone!!

Mr. Inspiring is going out of town for a few days and Miss C and I will be performing our own little "While You Were Out" transformation of our bathroom.  I will be posting pictures of that - - the good, the bad, and the ugly!!  And hopefully, the after pictures will show all good and all 'presentable' at least!!  ha!

Hugs ~~ Suz

I WON!!! Thank you, Madame Samm!!

I've been following Freda at The Adventurs of the Empress of the Universe, and we've been visiting the Wantobe Quilter event over at Sew WE Quilt with Madame Samm.........  Madame Samm is giving away wonderful gifts EVERYDAY!!! 


So this morning, I was making my daily visit and I saw this picture:




And I seriously thought "Wow - - look - - Someone else's name is Suz....."

Then I saw Missouri and thought ,"HMM  I wonder where in Missouri??"

Then I saw Freda's name!! 

(ok - I admit - I spend A LOT of money on hair color, and YES, it IS blonde - - for an apparent reason!!!)

I was soo excited!  I checked my email, and I found an email, first, from Freda - - she was all up - doing the HAPPY DANCE!! 

Then I saw my email from Madame Samm, asking me to send her my address!  Well you can bet I did that right away, and I sent her my phone number.  Within a couple of minutes, my phone rang and the number displayed was not a number I recognized!  Can you believe it??? Madame Samm called me!!!

She is the sweetest thing!  And smart!!  And I'll tell you, from what she was telling me about the Wantobe Quilter, it's even bigger than I thought!!  Whew - it's a wonder she gets to sleep at all!!!

Look at what I won!!!



Look at all the wonderful goodies stuffed into that basket!!  Madame Samm told me that the sponsors have been soo generous!! 


I am honored, Madame Samm!  Thank you for the prize and thank you so much for the call!!


I popped over to her personal blog because she told me that she had pictures up of the CA-UTEST fabric called 'Ghastlies'.    She's using it to make a cover for her sewing machine.   It's SEW cute!!








Thank you, again, Madame Samm!  Freda - I hope you enjoy your fabric - it's gorgeous!!


Thank you Colonial Needle and Famore Cutlery!!


Hugs ~~ Suz

Progress! Progress! Progress!

I'm just too stinkin excited!!  I have finished my quilt top!!  FINISHED!  I've never said that about a quilt top before!!  Here are some pictures!!

Ok - - so this is the picture BEFORE I put on the border.  I was just *tickled pink* at this point!  Yes, the pun was very intended!!

I worked on this ALL.FLIPPIN.DAY yesterday.  Yesterday morning, I had 25 of the 9-patch blocks.  At 5 pm I had this!! 

I went and had dinner with Mr. Inspiring.  He's a police officer and had to work at our local community picnic.  We ate dinner at the picnic.  (chicken n dumplins, kettle beef, dressing, green beans, fried chicken, fruit salad and home made dessert!!) 

When we got home, Mr. Inspiring helped me decide which fabric to use for the border.  (He kinda knows about things like - - his mom has quilted for years!!)  We decided on the dark pink of the little squares and WOW - - I {heart} this quilt!!

Here are the pictures!

(Whew!!  Made it through inspection!!)

I started working on the back - - I didn't have enough of the fabric that I want to use for the back, so I'm piecing it.  I worked on it too late last night, and some of my corners aren't matched up like they should be so - - I'll be working on redoing that this afternoon.....  Then, I'll be ready to make my sandwich and get to quilting it.  I decided I'd try to hand quilt it - - I've got 8 weeks to get it done.... so I should be able to make a pretty good go at it.  If I get in a bind, I'll call my MIL and pathetically ask for help!!

Have a great Sunday, everyone!!!

Hugs ~~ Suz

I'm linking up with these parties:

Breast Cancer Quilt - In Process!!

Every year in October, a group of ladies gets together and has a Breast Cancer Awareness Dinner and Auction.  A couple of years ago I donated my first rag quilt. You can read that post HERE!!  I really enjoyed doing the rag quilt as you don't have to be as precise as a traditional quilt, and it goes together quickly!

So this year I decided to make a traditional quilt for the Breast Cancer Awareness Auction.  I really like the Disappearing 9 Patch.  I found a great tute here, and I thought that looked easy enough for a first quilt.

I made my 9 patch blocks out of 4" x 4" squares of fabric.  Since this is for the breast cancer dinner, I decided to make it pink.  Imagine that, right??

I have 25 blocks made.  Here are pictures of some of the blocks.

Since this is for the Breast Cancer event, I also threw in some fabric I have that supports the awareness as well.

I laid all 25 blocks out in a 5 x 5 pattern.  I really like it like that, so I'm thinking I'm not going to make them disappear.  Instead, I'm going to put a white border around each block, and perhaps a dark pink square at each intersection.  I have 8 1/2 weeks to get this done.  So if I don't post much through the next few weeks, blame it on the pink!!

Here are the last pictures I took before sitting down to write this post.  It's of my helper/inspector.........  I wonder what he's thinking..............

He looks pretty content - - I believe he approves!!

I'll keep you posted on this project. 

Thanks for stopping by!!

Hugs ~~ Suz

I'm linking up to these parties: