Wheat Berry and Lavender Soothing Pillow

A few weeks ago I took a spur of the moment vacation to Utah to visit my brother, sister-in-law and nephews. It was a quick 4 day trip – my family loaded up and we made the 10 hour drive. The ride there was a breeze but after a few fun filled days and making the long drive home without any breaks, my neck was absolutely killing me. I longed for something to help soothe it because my usual over the counter pain reliever just wasn’t cutting it. I headed to my local Sprouts farmers market in search for a grain that would be suitable for heating in a fabric bag. I was initially searching for buckwheat but was unable to find it in my store. I settled on wheat berries. I knew it would be one of the grains that wouldn’t give off a scent when heating them up in the microwave. I also found some lavender flowers that smelled absolutely divine!

You can make any size pillow you’d like but for me it was definitely a long and skinny neck pillow that was in order! I made my bag out of boring muslin then made a pretty pillowcase to go over the muslin bag so that it could easily be removed and thrown in the washer.

Materials:

• 16″ wide X 5″ tall piece of muslin – or any other plain cotton fabric scrap – cut on the fold so that the piece is actually 32″ wide X 5″ tall.
• 17″ wide X 6″ tall decorative cotton for the pillow case – cut on the fold so that your piece is actually 34″ wide X 6″ tall.
• Approximately 1.5 to 2 lbs. of wheat berries.
• A small amount of lavender flowers.

I serged the long edges of the muslin leaving one short end open for adding the wheat berries and lavender. Alternately, you can sew the muslin with right sides together then turn right side out, leaving a short end open for adding the wheat berries and lavender.

If you have a funnel with a big enough hole in it, that’s probably the easiest way to get the wheat berries and lavender flowers into the slender bag.

Our funnel was not big enough so Ivy spooned in the wheat berry and lavender layer by layer to ensure the lavender flowers were evenly distributed along the bag until it was about 3/4 of the way full. I then serged the opened end. If you are using a sewing machine, just turn raw edges to the inside of the bag and sew.

Sew the cover in the same way as your muslin bag and leave one short end open. I hemmed the short end that I left open using a wide basting stitch but securing the stitches with a fix stitch at the beginning and the end. Of course, I had to add a little bit of girly flair so I crocheted an edging directly into the hem by single crocheting into each straight stitch with a small crochet hook, (I used size –),  and size 10 crochet cotton.

I single crocheted for 3 full rows then for my final row I crocheted a frilly little picot stitch with the following stitch pattern:

sc into first stitch, *ch 3, sc into same stitch, sk 1 stitch, sc in into next stitch and repeat from *.

Do you like my healing fairy fabric?  The weight of the warm grains on my neck and the soothing smell of lavender really help loosen up my neck. I pop it in the microwave for a couple minutes whenever I need a little relief.

Guaranteed to never leave home without it – well, at least not on a long road trip!