Homemade Mask Making - What’s working including videos and patterns

It’s energizing to be part of so many different mask-making journey’s.

Beckie and I are honored to help troubleshoot your fabric mask-making needs.

Below are the best tips and videos I’ve sent to Legacy Quilters, and many tips sewers have replied confirming what worked.

We’ve been entirely out of elastic for weeks now, but fellow quilters have suggested;

• shoe ties
• hair elastic
• pipe cleaners
• ironing 2 1/2 inch strips
• pre-made bias tape
• bias tape makers 

The best-performing designs are masks constructed from two layers of high-quality, “quilter’s cotton,” from two-layers of thick batik fabrics, and a double-layer mask with an inner layer of flannel and outer layer of cotton.

A simple light test can help you decide whether a fabric is the right candidate for a mask.

“Hold it up to bright light,” said Dr. Segal. “If light passes really easily through the fibers and you can almost see the fibers, it’s not a good fabric. If it’s a denser weave of thicker material and light doesn’t pass through it as much, that’s the material you want to use.” You can read the entire article from the New York Times here,

https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-homemade-mask-material-DIY-face-mask-ppe.html


The next brilliant article I found (with video) has masks that feature a pocket on the back to slip a disposable filter into cotton ties without elastic to withstand harsh sanitation processes and two different fabrics to distinguish the front from the back! It has to be my favorite resource yet!


Here’s the link, https://seekatesew.com/how-to-sew-a-face-mask-with-filter-pocket-no-elastic/

Instead of using cotton for the ties, in the next article, I found suggests using knit t-shirts or leggings for the ties. https://www.madeeveryday.com/fabric-face-mask-free-pattern

There SO MUCH information out there, but I wanted to share with your our top tips. It can be challenging to weed out the articles that are confusing or are obsolete now.


If you have tips or suggestions, leave comments below! We’re all in this together.


-Emily

Norton House Quilting, 30 W. Main Street, Wilmington, VT