I don't know what it is but my daughter loves herself a good cold pack. She asks for one whenever she has a fall, stubs her toe, gets a scratch, has an aching body part or just generally needs to feel better. She recently pulled too much nail from her thumb, which made it sting when she sucked it and so she needed a cold pack "weally, weally wickly" so she could get back to sucking it asap!
Normally, I grab a frozen lunchbox brick from the freezer, wrap it in a tea-towel and hand it to her. It is neither comfortable, nor attractive and quite often the brick doesn't make it back into the freezer once it has tended her wounds - then I'm out of lunchbox bricks for my son's lunchbox ... and well, that's just frustrating.
Being that I am in Canada right now (without my machine) and haven't sewn anything for months, I have been feeling the need to sew a little something - nothing too big or too complex, because I would need to use my mother-in-law's vintage (40+ years old) machine, just something straightforward and simple. It came to me. I knew just the thing. Of course, my daughter needed her very own cold pack. Perfect! And I would get to keep my lunchbox bricks nicely frozen in the freezer!
I decided to DIY the actual cold pack as well. It is extremely simple. You just need to half fill a sandwich bag (a heavy duty one is the best) with 1 part rubbing alcohol and 2 parts water, squeeze out as much air as possible, seal well (I added two layers of duct tape to the top of the bag) and pop it in the freezer. It freezes nicely but because of the rubbing alcohol it doesn't completely solidify and will be pliable very quickly (much better than a solid old freezer brick!).
I made the cold pack covers using a red and a white flannel and went with a "first aid" theme because I thought it was kind of appropriate and I knew they would stand out in the freezer and not be mistaken for a lunchbox cooler. I sewed them in a very basic pillowcase style of cover so that I could easily remove them for washing.
So, my simple little sewing project using a vintage Singer turned out pretty okay and is probably one of the most practical things I have made. And with all the slippery snow we've had here lately, and my Aussie children still learning how to walk carefully in it, I'm sure the packs will get plenty of use!
Now, onto some Christmas sewing. It's getting so close.