How to Sew Simple Hand Warmers with Removable Covers

With cold weather on it’s way, make a pair of simple rice filled hand warmers with a cover that you can remove for washing. Pop them in the microwave and then into your pockets before you set off on a walk or to watch the kids play football. They stay warm for quite some time so you can give your hands a warm up whenever you need to.

A set of two makes a great gift, just tie them together with a length of ribbon and add a label telling the recipient how to warm and use them.

They are super quick to make so ideal if you need a lot of gifts for a group, and after all who doesn’t like to have nice warm hands!

As they go in the microwave I like to use cotton fabric and thread just to be on the safe side. I used a beautiful leaf Rose and Hubble cotton poplin, you’ll use less than half of a fat quarter to make a pair of hand warmers.

For the inner bag I used an old curtain lining, but any cotton fabric with a fairly close weave will work nicely.

This would be a great beginner project, if you’ve not sewn before you might like to check out this information, where I go through all the things you’ll need to get started sewing.

To make a pair of hand warmers you will need:

2 pieces of patterned fabric 30cm x 14cm (12” x 5.5”)

4 pieces of plain fabric 14cm x 14cm ( 5.5” x 5.5”)

300g rice ( 1.5 cups)

The photo only shows the fabric for 1 hand warmer - I’ve no idea why!!! I assume you’d want to make a pair.

First make the outer cover with the patterned fabric. Start by turning a narrow double hem on both short ends and stitch.

Lay the fabric right side up and fold 8.25cm (3.25'‘) in on one side and then the other so there is an overlap in the middle. Then sew across the raw edges, marked with the red dotted line. Make sure you start and finish each line of sewing with a few stitches back and forth to secure.

Turn right side out through the gap.

Next make an inner bag from the plain fabric.

Place 2 of the squares together and stitch all the way round, leaving a gap on one side. I find it easier to leave the gap in the middle of a side rather than at the edge. It just seems to make the ‘sewing up the gap’ process later a bit easier.

Clip the corners and then turn right side out.

Fill the bag with about 150g of rice, that’s about 3/4 cup. Obviously you can put less if you’d like floppier hand warmers but I’d not recommend adding more, you’d struggle to sew it closed! Remember to adjust the heating time in the microwave if you add less rice too.

I bought a funnel especially for jobs like this but could I find it? Could I ‘eck as like! (Sorry, that is colloquial northern English for “no, no I could not”) If like me, you find yourself without a funnel just fashion one from a piece of scrap paper. It saves the rice from going everywhere!

Sew up the gap…..

Then tuck the rice filled bag into the cover and it’s done!

Heat the hand warmers together in the microwave for 1 minute - that’s if you put both in together. You can actually heat them for a little longer to get them really hot but do this with caution. Experiment with your microwave and see what works best for you. Our microwave is 800w and I actually heat my hand warmers for about 1m 20 seconds to get them toasty hot and they last for a good hour in my pockets. Try it in 10 second increments and see what works for you.

Now and again you need to put a mug of water in the microwave with the hand warmers, they dry out over time and this will help refresh them.

I used rice to fill my hand warmers because I had it handy but you can also fill bags like this with other things. Wheat works well - the whole grains that you can often buy from a pet shop, whole oats or walnut shells. Kristin from A Little Crispy has a great comparison of different filling options.

The hand warmers end up 4.5” square, you can obviously adjust the size to suit if you want them bigger or smaller. This is a nice size for my coat pockets, and the bigger the bag the longer it seems to keep its heat for.

This is how it looks in my delicate lady sized hands:

And to give you an idea, here it is in my husband’s man sized hands!

You can see here how the nice large overlap means the inner bag is completely enclosed but is still easy to remove if you need to wash the cover.

Do you know anyone who needs a set of handy hand warmers as a gift this Autumn? Or do you just need a set yourself for long dog walks or times when you have to stand outside in the cold? They’d make great Christmas gifts too… just saying if you like to plan ahead!

I’ll be sharing this idea at some of these link ups