Face Masks

We have now been told that wearing a home made face mask when grocery shopping, for example,  could provide some protection against the pandemic.  My sister had previously been asked to make masks for a hospice which her family helps support.  I compared the tutorial she used to several others and decided to go with hers with the following changes.  I enlarged the rectangle of fabric to 9" x 15" and I added a layer of non woven interfacing which I cut at 8" x 6".  I used a pipe cleaner instead of a twist tie to provide a bit of shaping over the bridge of the nose and I used 1/4" bias tape I had on hand to go fully around the back of your head twice instead of using elastic just around the ears.  The hardest part of making the mask was getting all the pleats in.  I found it helpful to pin down the centre of the pleats too in order keep the edges straight.  Here is the tutorial.

You really need a heavy duty machine to add the channels for the ties to go through as you are sewing through 10 layers of fabric in places.  Here they are all completed and one is being modeled on a foam wig form from the kid's dress up trunk.

I washed them all, but please don't do what I did and wash them all loose.  I was faced with untangling 20 strings from 10 masks before I could put them in the dryer.  It took about 15 minutes to get them all untangled.  I put them in pairs in mesh bags in the dryer so at most I would have to untangle would be two......

Here they are all pressed flat, folded in half and individually packaged for delivery to my family members.

I'll likely be making a few more before "this" is all over.....