Recycled felt hand warmers

This is a really useful project using herbs and foodstuffs you will have in the kitchen / garden and old worn out sweaters from your wardrobe or bought from a charity shop for a few pounds.

What you need

2 or 3 coordinating wool sweaters (at least 80% non machine washable wool).

Washing machine.

Bowl of rice

Bowl of home grown and dried lavender (or shop bought)

Needle, scissors, pins and cotton thread

Instructions

This project was initially published on UniquelyUK.

Step 1: Put the wool sweaters in to the washing machine along with a couple of old towels and some washing powder. Wash at 60 degrees.

Step 2: Cut up the sweaters along the seams so that you have piece of fabric to work from.

Step 3: Cut out a square template from a piece of paper (I did mine 5” x 5”) and pin to the felted fabric. Cut out 2 squares.

Step 4: Cut out heart shapes from other coordinated felt fabric using a template found on the Internet (just type “heart template” into Google and print out).

Step 5: Lay the heart shapes on top of one of the cut out squares.

Step 6: sew the smaller heart to the centre of the large heart.

Step 7: Now pin and stitch the larger heart to the centre of one of the squares

Step 8: With right sides together sew up the sides of the square , leaving a gap wide enough to enable you to stuff the square

Step 9: Turn the square right side out and stuff the square with uncooked rice and dried lavender. One large spoon of rice to one teaspoon of lavender.

Step 10: Sew up the gap.

See this great Video from my Uniquely UK colleague Simmi – http://gracesfavours.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/tutorial-how-to-ladder-stitch-secret-to.html on how to ladder stitch.

I created some of these by eliminating the square and just sewing up the larger heart shape. A bit more fiddly but I think the end result is even better.