These homemade hand warmers are perfect for keeping your hands warm in the Winter!
We’re off to New York next month and everyone I’ve told about it had told me just how cold it’s going to be!
That’s where the idea for these cute little homemade hand warmers came from but as brilliant as I think they turned out, there was a fatal flaw to my plan – keep reading and see if you can guess what it was?
You really don’t need much in the way of sewing skills to make these but I made them as part of a craft afternoon with Jen and because I was at her house, she let me play on her all-singing, all-dancing sewing machine which was fun and scary at the same time. 😉 You could make these just by hand stitching them if you prefer…
How to make homemade hand warmers
Step 1 – cut two squares of equal size from a good quality cotton fabric. Mine came from Jen’s fabric cupboard and were pre-cut but they’re both about a 15cm square which is the perfect size for a hand warmer.
Step 2 – place the fabric squares on top of each other making sure that the right sides are facing inward.
Step 3 – Stitch around the edges leaving a small gap as you can see in the photo below. It makes it easier to stitch up after you’ve put the filling in if you make the gap in the middle of one of the edges rather than on a corner as I would have done without Jen’s advice.
Step 4 – Using a sharp pair of scissors, cut off the extra fabric from the corners to make it as neat as possible when you turn it the right way round.
Step 5 – Turn your fabric square the right way around and give it a quick iron to smooth out the seams.
Step 6 – Using a little funnel made of paper if you don’t have a plastic one, spoon in a couple of spoonfuls of rice so the bag is about half full.
Step 7 – If you want to add some dried lavender to the rice so it smells nice when you heat it up then go for it. You can add a tablespoon of dried lavender into your bag at this point.
Step 8 – Stitch up the gap in your hand warmer and make sure it’s all secure.
Step 9 – Pop in the microwave when you’re ready to go. A 30-second blast will keep the sachet warm for at least 15 minutes but you can blast them for a little longer if you want them hotter for longer. They’re great to pop inside your gloves and I find a 30-second blast is usually enough for me.
And in case you haven’t guessed, the fatal flaw to my plan for using these homemade hand warmers in New York to keep us warm and toasty was the fact that I didn’t consider that we wouldn’t have access to a microwave to warm them up! I was gutted when I realised that we had no means of warming up our hand warmers.
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