Shoulder Rice Heating Pad: FREE Sewing Pattern Printable PDF

This rice heating pad is shaped to perfectly drape your shoulders and upper back for 5lbs of cord-free comforting warmth!

Here’s a free sewing pattern for a rice heating pad — shaped to drape over your shoulders!

We love our rice heating pads.

You can heat them in your microwave for 30 second intervals, or if you’re like us — heat it up in an oven safe dish in your oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit until it’s warm!

For this project, you’ll need about a yard of fabric and a 5lb bag of rice.

You’ll also want my free sewing pattern you can print below!

Sizing

This heating pad is intended to fit adult bodies.

It’s a little bulky on a child’s shoulders, but my kids still enjoy these, too!

Assemble Your Pattern

First you’ll want to assemble your sewing pattern!

The sewing pattern comes as a printable PDF and is spread out over 6 pages.

Print your pattern out at 100% scale.

The pages need to be assembled at the margin guides.

You can do this by cutting and gluing at the margin lines, or just fold at the margin lines and tape them together.

There are 3 pages for the top row, and 3 pages for the bottom row!

After your pattern is assembled, cut it out.

Seam Allowance

There is a hefty 1/2″ seam allowance around this pattern. This helps keep all that rice in and ensures your heating pad will hold up for a long time!

The 1/2″ seam allowance is also very forgiving while sewing. If you’re a little crooked, it’s not a big deal! (this is such a beginner friendly project!)

Need help figuring out what a 1/2″ seam allowance is on your machine?

You can take the pattern and put your needle down right on the stitching line on the pattern. The edge of your pattern (the solid line you cut) is your seam allowance — see what number/marking this lines up with on your sewing machine! (On my 1904 treadle, the 1/2″ seam allowance is right at the 6!)

Sewing The Rice Heating Pad

Cut two pieces out with your pattern piece.

Tip: You can use your bag of rice to hold your pattern in place while you cut it out! No tracing or pinning!

Use a cotton fabric. Woven is best, thicker the better!

(you might notice I used a knit fabric. Not what I recommend using, but it’s what I had and used for these heating pads today!)

Put your pieces right side together.

Sew all the way around your pieces, but leave the top edge/the edge that will lay against your upper back OPEN.

Clip the right angle corners of your seam allowance (carefully — so that you don’t cut into your stitches).

You’ll also want to carefully snip into your seam allowance around your curved edges. (this just helps your fabric not to pull/bunch up on curved portions)

Turn right side out.

Filling With Rice

I used a 5lb bag of rice for this project.

You could add more for this project for an even heavier, more grounding heating pad if you want! I estimate it will probably hold 8-10lbs MAX.

Add your rice little by little, sewing a line of stitches all the way across every couple of inches to hold the rice into place.

Creating little sealed “bags” of rice all throughout your heating pad will prevent all the rice from running into one spot on the heating pad. These lines of stitches evenly distribute the rice.

Once you get close to the back, fold your remaining raw edge in, and sew ALMOST all the way closed, leaving a little opening.

Fill up the remaining empty spot with rice, then finish sewing the last little opening closed.

That’s it! This rice heating pad is super grounding with how heavy it is. We love our rice heating pads in our home, and this one is my favorite I’ve made yet!

Happy sewing!