Bleeding Heart Hand Warmers

This is a cheap way of keeping your hands toasty in the winter. The hand warmers are easily heated in the microwave, and can be used as many times as you like. I used out of date rice, and the dye supplies I had lying around, but you can substitute in an all in one type of dye if you prefer, just as long as it suits your fibre of choice.

• out of date rice
• cotton, linen or other plant fibre fabric (viscose also works)
• fibre reactive dyes - I used Jacquard Procion MX 150 Jet black and 032 Carmine Red
• plastic teaspoons
• rubber gloves
• dust mask
• soda ash or washing soda
• plastic bags and tray or bowl
• synthrapol or regular liquid soap
• tailor's chalk
• cotton thread
• funnel
• pattern making supplies - pencil, paper and scissors

Fold a piece of paper in half, and mark the top and bottom of the palm of your hand. This is the height of your heart. Draw a half heart shape along the fold, then cut and unfold. Trim a bit until you're happy with your heart shape.

Draw out your heart shape four times, two for each piece. Leave around 1cm around each heart for the seam allowance, and cut your fabric down to comfortably fit your pieces. I just used a black biro, because it will withstand soaking and I knew I was dyeing over it with black, but if you want to do pale colours and are worried about the pen showing, try outlining with running stitch instead.

Make a solution using either a ratio of 20g soda ash to 1l very hot water, or 200g washing soda to 1l very hot water. You can decrease the quantities so long as you keep in ratio, but the solution will keep indefinitely if stored in a well labelled bottle.

Soak your fabric in enough solution to cover it. Leave a few hours, or overnight.

This is the fun bit. Take your fabric out of the soaking solution (you can keep this and reuse again), and place in your plastic tray. Put on your rubber gloves and dust mask, and start adding the dye. I put a little heap of red in the centre of each heart, then (leaving a large gap between it and the red) the black all the way around each heart. I then started smooshing the dye into the fabric, starting with each red part, and then pressing the black in so that each heart was covered in red and black.

Put the whole tray in a plastic bag (I reuse all my bags - dye will just wash off of them), and leave a good twelve hours, or overnight.

Fibre reactive dye is a pain to rinse out. I recommend rinsing in cold water a few times, then soaking for half an hour in a mix of synthrapol/liquid soap and hot water. Rinse another few times, until the water runs clear.

The easier option is to rinse a couple of times, then whack it through the washing machine, but don't add any clothes you're worried about staining!

Leave to dry, and iron if needed.

Redraw two hearts on the wrong side of the fabric, using tailor's chalk. Check the right side to make sure you've got the red nicely centred. Then cut out these two hearts with 1cm seam allowance. Flip your fabric to right side up, and pin your cut out hearts to it, right side to right side. Again, check for central placement of the red spot. Cut around them again, so you have two sandwiched hearts with seam allowances all round.

Using black cotton thread (I used two strands of a six stranded embroidery cotton), sew around your heart outline using running stitch. Leave a 4cm gap along one of the straight sides, for turning right side out.

Next snip out little triangles of seam allowance around all of the curves, being careful not to snip through your stitching. Also make a slit through the seam allowance at the inner point of the heart, and cut off the bottom point of the bottom. Turn right way out, using a pencil or knitting needle to push it into shape.

Use the funnel to fill each heart with rice. Use enough to nicely fill out the heart, without it being impossible to sew shut.

Then, slip stitch your hearts closed, tie off the thread, and bury it inside the heart.

To use your hand warmers, stick them in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute, depending on microwave strength (start with a shorter time, check how warm they are, and keep going if needed. Once you know how long it takes, you can do it all in one go the next time). The first couple of times you microwave them, steam might be released from water that's got trapped in the rice. This is normal.

To keep your hands extra toasty, use the hand warmers inside a pair of gloves or mittens.