The Inadvertent Seamstress

 

 

  

I mentioned in a previous IS post that I would most likely be working on some more face masks as a sewing project.  Because I (still) hardly ever go out into the world, I didn't feel any urgency.  I had the two masks I'd made, plus one each a sister-in-law made and sent to Ron and I.  Until....I actually needed a mask.  The first time I wore a mask was to take the dogs to the vet for their vaccinations.  It was a curbside appointment.  I chose to wear the mask my sister-in-law made.  While I was waiting in the car for the vet to do his thing, one of the ear elastics spontaneously broke.  Kind of panicked, I got it tied up well enough, and fooling around getting it back on, the other elastic broke.  Did I have a back-up mask?  It hadn't even occurred to me!  A friend said I was "book smart" about mask wearing. I knew ABOUT wearing masks, but I had no established habits or routines based on usage. TOO TRUE!  I apologized to the vet staff that I no longer had a mask.  Since it was curbside, it was low-risk but still....I decided I needed to get the mask thing taken care of RIGHT NOW.

It happens there's a woman up and down and up the street who's making masks and had advertised them on the local website for $10 each.  A neighbor had bought several from her and found them satisfactory, and Ron had recently picked up a couple as well.  She keeps a stock of them out on a card table in front of her cabin.  As soon as I got home, I grabbed a $50 bill from my traveling stash (because who's traveling, right?) and hied myself over to her house.  I spoke to her a bit about the masks.  She's been making them since the beginning of the pandemic and has got it down to a science.  They're three layer, which is now recommended, and she puts one together in about 45 minutes.  The construction is top notch, and she has an abundance of attractive fabrics.  Done and done.  No change, I walked away with 5 masks.  I keep one in the car with an original one I made as a backup, one in my purse, one near the door in the house and two extras.  There's no catching me maskless again.  

 

Look at these beauties!  I can't compete.

 So what to do for a sewing project?  Even though the local Joann's Fabric Store has curbside, there's nothing close to essential about sewing projects.  Hmmm.  I was doing some reading relative to my yoga-practice goal, and it mentioned using an eye pillow during the savasana portion of the practice. An eye pillow is a small bean-bag type pillow that rests gently over the eyes. Savasana, aka corpse pose, is typically done at the end to allow your body to integrate the practice.  

 

Source:  depositphotos.com

 

 My reading indicated that an eye pillow can enhance the experience.  I did a little looking on-line at that.  According to yogajournal.com, "Light pressure on the eyeballs lowers heart rate, sometimes by quite a bit, by eliciting what’s called the oculocardiac reflex. It also stimulates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve has an extensive resume: It regulates heart rate and digestion, and it’s the primary medium through which our belly brain regulates mood. It’s the main communicator to our rest-and-digest system, which helps us to relax more deeply."  I know, wooo-wooo. 

I googled DIY eye pillows.  Oh, yeah,  my next sewing project!  I already have fabric scraps (seamstresses ALWAYS have a collection of scraps!), so I took a look.  Plenty of choices.  You might recognize these scraps as the legs of some pj's I made into shorts in an early IS post.

 

One for the pillow, one for the pillow case.

 I chose to make a pillow with a washable pillow case just because.  Out of the same fabric, so you can't see the difference in pics.  Flax seed or rice are recommended as filler; I had rice. 

 

Rice as filler.

 

Finished, in its pillow case. 

 I tried the eye pillow that very night with savasana.  Now I don't know from vagus nerve, but it was HEAVENLY!  It quieted me down in a whole new way. The next night I tried it in bed before I went to sleep.  It was so nice again that  I decided to make another pillow so I could keep one in the bedroom.

  The second one is made from some really scrappy material:  OLD pj's.

 

In this case, I used different patterned scraps for front and back; no pillow case.

Finished.

 The fabric is very stretchy and you can see the dimension is a little longer than the first one, so the rice moves around more than I would like.  Next time I have the sewing machine set up, I'll make this one a little shorter.

 

Eye pillows are THE BEST!