At the end of a summer mission trip to Colorado I went on in 1998, all the church members from the church we were helping out gave my partner and me small gag gifts. One of my gifts was an eye pillow because it had inspired quite a bit of laughter between one of the ladies in the church and me. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what we were laughing at! I’ll have to dig through my own journals to find out! But that isn’t the main idea of this post. (Some how I get the feeling that some of you are going to make me explain that one later). 😉

Several years ago, my beloved eye pillow that had gotten me through many headaches was irreparably torn. I was sad but did not let my sadness keep me from being inspired by the fact that I now knew what the eye pillow was filled with and how to make a replacement.

Turns out that the replacement was so easy to make that I made a bunch and gave them away as gifts. The gifts were well received, and I even got a request to make one for someone else later on.*

So, a homemade eye pillow was one of the favorite gifts I ever received, and quite honestly, one of my favorite ones to give. I felt like I was giving such a personal gift because it is one made with my own hands.

Wondering how to make one? You can find step by step instructions on ehow.com. I didn’t do much more than email back then, so I did not have access to step-by-step instructions. Needless to say, I did not follow these exactly. Here’s what I did differently.

• Used bird seed instead of flax seed
• Left out the scented herbs
• Made them 2-tone (meaning sewing all 4 sides instead of just 3)

The main thing is to make sure you do not over or under fill your pillow. You want it to have enough room to let the filling settle down over your eyes. If it has too much or too little filling, it won’t work very well. Hopefully you can get an idea of how full it should be by the pictures below. Let me know if you have questions. 🙂

*Unfortunately I can’t remember whether I ever followed through on that request. If you are reading this and requested an eye pillow that you did not receive, please let me know. 😐