Last Sunday I posted that I really don’t enjoy making masks. Early on I tried a bunch of different kinds. I can’t tell you what they were called but some had 4 different templates to cut out and took forever just to make 1 mask. I don’t have a lot of crafting time and I was very against using my little bit of precious time doing something I didn’t enjoy doing. Later on I saw this mask tutorial on Facebook and while not perfect was much quicker to make than others. And my daughter likes this mask than any of the other masks I made. My husband will use what I make him as long as he could find them. But he really likes the ones that we got for free from various places. My son doesn’t like the ones I make and that’s why I don’t make him much of anything. He doesn’t mean to be mean. He’s a teenage boy. Enough said.

My daughter is leaving for Boston in a few days so I spent the last few days making masks for her. It’s been several months since I made the last set and I had forgotten some of the tips and tricks that I knew when I was making masks more regularly. I decided to make this post so I had a place to look and remind myself when next I make masks.

I bought some of these fabrics for my nieces and nephews and my daughter will get to enjoy some of them even though she’s 19! But her mask recipe is… 11″ x 6.3″ rectangles. If you looked at the tutorial you would know what these mean. The diagonal she prefers, and actually fits me and my son is 2″ down and 2.75″ at the top (from right to left). Here’s where I have to be careful, the crease in the middle, needs to be .5-.75″ from the center. The tutorial is .75″ but I feel that makes too big of a crease. The .5 might be a bit small so somewhere between would be just right. For my daughter, if I do a quarter inch seam for the top and the bottom, it’s a perfect fit. But I feel like it’s too bulky with all the fabric. I like to sew an eighth inch seam as that helps reduce the bulk inside. But the problem is that the end result makes a slightly bigger mask. It tends to cover her eyes. So, I need to do the quarter inch seam despite the bulk. If I am making it for me I want to do something between the quarter and the 8th inch. If I am making it for my son, the 8th inch seam seems to be fine.

The next issue is the elastic. My daughter likes the elastic at 6.5″ for each ear. This works for me too. This is too small for my son and I really need to figure out how long it needs to be for him. I will get a chance to figure it out since I will need to make my son some plain black ones at some point. He keeps misplacing the free ones he gets from various places.

Happy mask masking, if you are still making masks.

~Melanie