I may not have mentioned this before, but I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In our church, we are assigned “callings” — basically responsibilities within our congregation.  One of my callings is to organize and carry out women’s activities every other month.  Myself and our committee prayerfully consider what the women need and how we can serve them and our community.  This month we decided to do a couple service activities.  Here is one of them:

Breast Cancer Comfort Pillows

This is an easy and rewarding project that ANYONE with a sewing machine and pair of scissors can do.  Don’t let the fact that it is a “sewing project” scare you!  You can do it!

The project is making “Comfort Heart Pillows” for patients undergoing Breast Cancer treatments.

Audrey Simonson has been making these pillows since February 2019, and this is how she tells her story:

 I was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer, May of 2017.  I had a mastectomy and went through intensive chemotherapy for 16 weeks, and then 6 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week. Chemo can be debilitating, with nausea and exhaustion. Normal life is pretty much halted, not just for the chemo patient, but also for the caregiver, in this case my sweet husband. To help keep my spirits up during this time and keep my mind off of ‘me’ I realized I needed to find a positive purpose that I could engage myself with my limited stamina. I knew I could make heart pillows in my home like the one a friend, who was my visiting teacher at the time, gave me before my surgery. This little pillow provided the much welcomed comfort during my healing as well as protection from the seat-belt that went across my chest while the sutures healed and where the chemo port was implanted.  I realized there were other women going through the same thing I went through and would appreciate a pillow like this.

We did this activity in Phoenix Arizona on March 26th, 2019. In less than 2 hours completed 92 comfort heart pillows.  Granted, this was with a team of about a dozen women, but the point is — YOU CAN DO IT TOO!

I have included the printable pattern HERE and the printable tags HERE  you can safety-pin to the hearts.

Here are the instructions straight from Audrey (so I won’t paraphrase and mess something up!!)

I’ve attached the pattern for the heart. It is only half of the heart because I can’t fit the full heart on an 8×10 sheet of paper for print. The best thing to do is to make a paper pattern from this print by setting the center line of this half heart on the fold of a piece of tissue paper or butcher paper. Once it is cut, not cutting the fold,  when you unfold the pattern you will have a complete heart. You will place the full heart on the fleece to cut it out. It is important when the heart is cut from fleece that the fleece is doubled so that both sides of the heart are cut the same.  If each side is cut separately from a single thickness, then the two sides won’t match up well.  I hope this makes sense.

The hearts are sewn together with a ¼ inch seam. The pattern shows the sew line.  Do not turn the heart inside out once it is sewn. The seam/salvage should remain out. A gap in the stitching should be left large enough for the pillow to be stuffed with poly-fill (for pillows). It is important that the pillows are NOT stuffed to firmly, otherwise it is difficult to stitch the remainder of the heart to close it. Also, if stuffed to firmly creates a pillow that isn’t as comfortable when placed under the arm. But it should have enough stuffing for it to provide cushion and comfort.

I’ve also attached a picture of a completed heart pillow so you can see what it looks like.

On average I can get about 35 pillows cut from 3 yards of fleece. I can usually stuff about 20 to 25 pillows with one bag of poly-fill.

Be sure to call the hospital you’d like to donate to before you start the project to make sure they will take them!  Each institution has their own set of rules for donations!

This really was a super easy and very rewarding project to be a part of.  Thank you to Audrey and Just Serve for coming up with a great idea and having the platform to spread it.  If you are looking for ANY kind of service project in your area, check out Just Serve.  They add new projects all the time and vary in time and skill.  

If you decide to do this project, please leave me a comment so I can let Audrey know!  She would love to see her project getting done all over the place and blessing the lives of many.