Giving is in the air this time of year and we've been busy. We got together and made a dozen heart pillows for charity. The pillows are given to breast cancer patients to put under their arm to help protect their tender surgery and/or injection points. It's also a comfort pillow since it's a handmade gift to help them through this difficult time.

We chose calm soft cotton fabric and polyfil for the pillows. We heard about the charity from our quilt guild and found out our local quilt shop, Sylvia's Quilt Depot, accepted the pillows and passed them on to the charity representative.

We had a lot of fun making them. I remember commenting to Mom that this was the first time I had sewn curves on my machine. It just never came up until then and it wasn't really that hard, so it was great getting to learn a new skill. We hand cut the heart pillow patterns out, stitched them together on our machines leaving a hole for turning and filling, snipped the curves and turned them right sides out, filled them with polyfil, and then hand stitched the opening closed.

We ran into a little trouble at the beginning. It seemed that our polyfil was too fine as it began to beard out of the first pillow. As a quick fix, I made a new cover and stuffed the first pillow inside. That provided just enough thickness to keep the fibers inside. To make sure that didn't happen again, we ended up lining our other pillows with muslin and they came out really supple and cuddly. Since we were having so much fun we decided to make a nice pile of them.

If you are interested in making any of these for a local charity or someone in need do your research. Before we started making these, I had done some research online to find out what kind of fabric and sewing patterns people used. Should they be simple for smoothness and easy cleaning or should they be decorated to make them fun. At first, I didn't find much information, but then I found the key search term. "Mastectomy Pillow". With that key search term, I found tons of great resources and patterns online. Also, check with your local quilt shops, quilt guilds, and breast cancer support group/charity. They will let you know what kind of pillow is accepted and how to get them to those in need. There are three different common shapes - heart, crescent, and square so have fun!