How to Make Your Own Face Mask

Face masks are a good supplement to practicing good hygiene and social distancing during flu season. It's not something that will completely prevent you from getting sick. But if you are feeling sick, showing some symptoms, it can help prevent the spread of germs by containing those germs in your water droplets. If you're coughing or sneezing, by just containing them inside the mask. Masks are also good to help prevent you from touching your face, your mouth, and your nose. Which is great for kids, a lot of times, because they will be touching their face without even realizing it. So making your own mask is great. Great so that you have a mask. But you're not buying masks, which then should be going. Those surgical masks should be going to medical professionals and healthcare workers. So you have everything you need to make your own flu mask at home probably. It just requires scraps of fabric and a couple of lengths of elastic. So this pattern is available for download. Just easy, simple shape. You wanna cut two pairs of this pattern and you can cut it from the same fabric, or you can have a separate lining fabric and a separate main fabric. Just denote which is which, because the pattern is a little bit different for the main and the lining. So the main fabric pieces, you're going to cut about a half inch longer on this back end than the lining. So cut your lining pieces. So this is, the pattern is for the main piece and then cut the lining piece about a half inch shorter than that. So we have space to fold that over for our elastic casing. And making your own mask is very helpful to get a good fit around your face. Because that is one point of ready-made surgical masks. That it's better to have a good fit. So ready-made surgical masks. A lotta times they're too big for your face. There'll be gaps at the sides, which isn't really containing any germs. So this pattern has a really nice fit around my face and nose and goes under my chin. So it doesn't take much to stitch up a practice one to see how the fit is. And if you need to add any on the lower edge to fit around your chin, it's easy to just add that to the pattern. And for the elastic. So here's a stitched face mask so you can see how the shapes come together. And the elastic is threaded through those sides. I'm using a quarter inch wide, not quarter, eighth-inch-wide elastic. So it's very narrow. You can also use elastic cord. That's a great, comfortable, easy way to make these straps that go around your ears. So we need two lengths of that elastic. About 11 inches long each. And it's good to cut your elastic longer than you think you need it to be because it's always, it's easy to cut elastic off. And if it's too short to begin with, then you have to cut a whole new piece. So cut it longer than you think you need it to be. And that gives you extra room for tying the knot as well. So I've got my two main pieces and my two lining pieces and with right sides together, we're going to stitch each front seam using a quarter-inch seam allowance. Starting right at this point. And then backstitch. if you start right at the edge of the fabric sometimes, you can get a little fold in there. So I do recommend starting not right at the edge of the fabric, but one or two stitches in and then backstitch. And we're going around this curve. So you want to go slow. Stop frequently to make small pivots around the curve. And I'm using just a quilting cotton fabric. It's a nice, stable fabric with a tight weave. And it comes in a lot of cute prints. This project can be fun as well. You know, it's something that you're doing to stay healthy and safe and, you know, showing respect for everyone around you by containing your germs. But you can also be cute and have cute fabrics. And there are fabrics that have, you know, mouth or teeth prints that you can fussy cut to have that right over your mouth. We're gonna backstitch at the end. Trim your threads. And then we're going to take the pinking shears. Since this is a curve. We're going to just trim the very edge of that so that when we turn it right side out and press it and get everything stitched together, we don't have any lumps of fabric in our seam allowance along those curves. And I'm going to press that. If you have a pressing ham, you can press that over the ham. And when you're finished making this mask, I do recommend washing it before you put it right next to your face. Even if you prewashed the fabric, then when you're sewing it, you're touching the fabric and rubbing it all over your sewing table and your sewing machine. And it can potentially pick up germs. So before you put anything by your face, you wanna wash it. Some people like to have these types of flu masks for smog, but it's not actually proven that these surgical masks help with smog because the particles in smog are so small that they go right through the mask anyway. But for larger dust particles, the tight weave of cotton does help. So people with asthma. A lotta times like to wear these masks when they're cleaning and such. So now we're going to align our mask pieces, the main in the lining, with right sides together, lining up your seam and I'm pushing my seam allowance one one way and one the other way. So that we don't get a lot of bulk right there. And we're just going to stitch this upper and the lower edge and we're leaving the straight edges open for turning. So we're using a quarter-inch seam allowance again. Going to backstitch right here. Make sure everything is lying flat as it goes under your needle. It was very important for me to have my daughter wearing a mask when we were traveling. We were traveling not too long ago. It was a couple months ago. And she was constantly touching her face. We're constantly telling her to get her hands away from her face and she does it without even realizing it. So these masks are great for kids and this mask is kind of a small size anyway. So it would probably fit an older child. They can be easily made smaller. And I know there is some debate about whether wearing masks helps prevent the spread of any flu virus, even the one that's going around now. But, in my opinion, it's something. And like I said, it is not a replacement for washing your hands well and often. But it can help prevent the spread. Now, before we turn this right side out, we're going to take our pinking shears again and trim these curves as well. Just so that those seam allowances have room to turn back on themselves. Don't clip too far into the seam allowance that you mess with the strength of your seam. Get those pieces outta here. And then we're just reaching inside and turning everything right side out. We're gonna tuck that lining inside and get the seam right at the edge and give it a press. I like to try to roll that seam slightly to the inside so that none of my lining fabric is showing on the right side. So when that gets tucked in, that's gonna be against your face and that's gonna be showing. And the last step is to just get our elastic loops that are gonna go around our ears. I like that style better than the masks that go all the way around your head. It's just more comfortable. You can get a better fit. So my elastic. If you have a nice narrow elastic, you can just fold these edges and top stitch and then thread your elastic through. But for me, it's kinda tough for me to thread this elastic through this tiny tube. So I'm going to lay it here and then fold it over. So we're folding this short edge about a quarter inch in and then I'm going to fold it again over my elastic. And I'm going to top stitch that first fold without stitching into my elastic. And first, actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I do that, I'm going to top stitch the upper and lower edges. And that's an optional step. But I like the look of top stitching on my finished one. It just, it helps hold everything nice and flat. So let's do that first before we get into our straps. So I'm top stitching with the right side up at about a eighth of an inch. So just top stitching the edge of that seam. Holding everything down, holding everything in place. I'm using just my regular stitch length and a matching thread. If you want to get a little more of a pop out of your top stitching, increase the stitch length slightly by one or two and use a contrasting thread. I'm ending my top stitching out a half inch before. About a half inch before that short end. And we're gonna start about a half inch from the short end as well. Trim those threads. Now we can get our elastic in. So I'm just gonna finger press that. About a quarter inch in. Get my elastic down and fold that over the elastic. Actually, I'll do it this way. And, again, we're just top stitching the very edge of this fold. Backstitch at the end of that seam. Now I have my elastic tunneled through. So it's still, you can still move it. I just saved myself a step with threading that elastic through that little tube. And then if you have an elastic that you can machine stitch the ends to join them, you can go right ahead. I like to knot them, just so that I can easily. I can put it on my face and see how big I want those straps to be. So I'm gonna kind of gauge off of my other one. And tie a nice knot. The thinner the elastic you use, the better. The elastic cord that people use to make jewelry is nice for this as well, because it's stretchy enough to be used as a strap like this. To give you a good tight fit over your face and it's comfortable around the ears. So you wanna make a nice tight knot. The thinner the elastic, the better, because then that not will be able to slip inside of that tube. My elastic was too chunky and my tube too small for that knot to go in. So it's just, that knot has to kinda sit down there at the entrance of the tube. Which is fine. And then trim those ends away. And then you're gonna do the same thing on the other side. Folding that end down and, again, with your elastic inside to create that mask. And keep it clean. If the mask. The more you breathe into the mask and get it wet, the less effective it is. So make sure you keep it clean and keep it dry. And make sure you wash your hands, maintain social distance, and be safe.