Quarantine Chronicles: Mask Tutorials

Hello people!

A week ago I was asked to make some masks for my mother's household. So I spent some time designing and making some cloth masks to keep our droplets to ourselves. This is not a design that will do much more than keep droplets out of your mouth while it's on, but it will also keep your droplets from other people in case your sick and don't know it.

It's a simple design that my husband helped me with to mimic surgical mask. It's two layers of cotton fabric, so it's breathable. You'll need two pieces of cotton fabric that are 8"x9", 6 inches of elastic, pins would be helpful, and some way to sew it together. I used my sewing machine, but it can be hand sewn if you don't have that.

Step 1:
Cut your fabric and elastic. Two rectangles of 8" by 9" and 6 inches of elastic is what I've been using. Thinner elastic is generally most comfortable and if you're making these custom than you can size the elastic better.

Step 2:
Place fabric piece right sides together. We're going to use 1/2 inch seam allowances so on the 9" sides measure a half inch on top and bottom, put a pin in place to mark it.

Step 3:
Now put the elastic up against the pin on the side away from the edge and pin it. This way they will but at the very corners at the end. I learned that pinning it straight more than a half inch in keeps the elastic from moving around right before you sew it. Also watch out that the elastic isn't twisted before you pin it down.

Step 4:
Sew with 1/2 seam allowance around the rectangle leaving a hole to flip it right side out. I usually just start 1/3 of the way down one of the sides without elastic.

Step 5:
Flip right side out and press all sides.

Step 6:
Pin pleats on the elastic sides, the sides that were 9" to begin with and are now 8". I found that 4 pleats are needed for comfort. Three don't allow good coverage, but 4 are very comfortable. I didn't measure these exactly, I started one inch down from the top on both and trying to get the bottoms to generally match. Mine were no more than a half inch, but not much smaller.

Step 7:
Top stitch around the whole thing. Be careful not to let the pleats slip out, so wait until your in the first pleat to remove the first pin. After that I removed the pins as I came to the pleat, a bit before it went under the foot so I could make sure the edges lined up well. This is mostly to make it look neat rather than any functional reason.

Now your done! It's pretty simple and quite fast after the first one. Be careful not to put the elastic on the 8" side, it's easy to forget. Hope this is useful to you guys and stay sane out there!