Charity Sewing Project: Mastectomy Pillows

As I thought, it took longer to make the mastectomy pillows than it did to make 200 port cushions.  In fact, the second hospital picked up their port cushions as we were finishing the mastectomy pillows for the first hospital.  She took one of the mastectomy pillows with her to see if there was a need for these with her patients. She told me she would let me know if they want some.

The first hospital picked up their mastectomy pillows and could not stop talking about how much their patients appreciated the port cushions.  Apparently no one there had heard of such a thing but they certainly love them.  I have a feeling we will be making more port cushions in the future.  That is fine because I now have a variety of 5/8" Velcro in various fun colors.

We have not really decided on our next project at this time.  We've asked the hospitals if there is a project that they would want us to do, but neither hospital could think of anything.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about making a simple red, white and blue, patriotic patchwork type throw blanket.  So far, I've been going through scraps separating out my red, white, and blue fabric.  More on this project later.

Mastectomy Pillow

Step 1:  Make the pattern.  We made one from cardboard construction paper for 1/2 of the pattern to be placed on the fold.  Cut 2 of these.  We also made one full pattern out of cardboard.  Both patterns were used.  It really depended on your fabric as to which was best to use.

Step 2:  We cut out 2 pieces, back and front, of the pillow, pinning them together as we went.

Step 3:  We serged and sewed around each 2 pieces of the pillow leaving a good 2" to 4" opening on the side.

Step 4: We stuffed each pillow with cotton fiber.  We did not stuff to capacity.  Since the women using these pillows will have surgical incisions which are trying to heal, we did not want the pillow to cause the arm to be lifted too high.

Step 5:  We sewed the opening closed.  Some were sewn by hand and others on the sewing machine.

That's all there is to it.