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Give Back by Sewing Masks

I feel like Mark Twain is one of the greats when it comes to quotes, it’s almost a cliche to quote him. I can’t deny that this quote popped up in my Instagram feed and I was like “damn, Mark, I needed that”.

“The best way to cheer yourself up, is to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain.

And that’s all it took. I started to look up how I could help our frontline workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis. As a hairstylist, outside of the skills we are taught to technically complete a service, there’s a lot that we do that is simply about making people happy. Being out of work, I’ve been pretty bummed that I haven’t made someone happy in awhile! So I was itching to find an outlet to help where I could. My sister found a link being shared in her community calling all sewists to help make masks for the vulnerable populations and the elderly to prevent the spread. I wouldn’t ever describe myself as a ‘sewist’, but I’m a huge fan of any DIY, and I definitely have a sewing machine that I play around with. This DIY is incredibly easy, it’s very kind, and it really did cheer me up. Mark Twain, what a smart dude.

The foundation I donated to was the Michael Garron Hospital Foundation. They made things pretty clear in terms of their requirements. I’d recommend sourcing out where in your community is accepting donations and follow their requirements if provided. We’ve provided a pictorial to our pattern to make your mask-making a breeze, just make sure it follows your foundation’s requirements!

100% cotton tightly woven
A sewing machine
Scissors
An iron
Sewing pins
Sewing elastic (you’ll want 1/8″ x 7″ size pieces per ear)
Parchment Paper

Make a Pattern by measuring 7″x9″ on a piece of parchment paper. Cut this rectangle out.
Pin your parchment paper pattern onto your sheet of fabric. Cut around your pattern to make your 7″x9″ rectangular piece of fabric. Repeat until you have enough rectangles to make your desired amount of masks (each mask requires 2 rectangles)
Lay one rectangle (we’ll call it R-A) side down.
Pin your elastic on the right side of R-A about 2 inches from the top corner and then 2 inches above the bottom corner so it forms a ‘C’. Repeat on the other side (should form a backward ‘C’)
Take the other rectangle of fabric (R-B) and place it on top. One by one, carefully remove a pin while holding the elastic in place and re-pin down in the exact same spot but this time attaching R-B to it. The elastic should now be sandwiched between R-A & R-B.
Do this for all the other pins. Your rectangle should now be sandwiching your elastics.
Make sure the rectangles line up well, trim any excess material.
Starting from midway of the right side, stitch the perimeter almost completely shut leaving a couple of inches out from where you started. Don’t forget to double stitch your elastic areas, and pick up the machine foot at the corners to switch directions. (Image 2)
Flip inside out, and carefully push the corners of the mask, I used a pencil. (Image 3)
Fold the mask 3 into pleats, mine we just over an inch each (Image 4)
Fold in the opening and used your iron to reinforce the fold, then do the same with the pleats, removing pins as you iron.
Sew the perimeter of the mask and you’re done!

I found this amazing YouTuber that did a super easy tutorial on how to make these masks, her dimensions are different but we both used a similar method, check her out here.

Stay safe and have fun while you’re at it! It really was the pick me up I needed while the reality of this pandemic was settling in.

A nice way to keep your energy buzzing while sewing away is our Ginger Ginseng Iced Tea – it’s got the right amount of kick to keep you motivated and your taste buds happy at the same time.