Diy Mask - Blog Posts

Himiko toga mask🌸👐

Very useful

Quick, cheap, disposable mask tutorial.

These masks exist for one purpose: to give them to strangers who you think are potentially spreading sickness. There’s some social engineering put into this.

So you’re making your one shopping trip a week and there’s a lady near you who’s in your space and breathing down your neck. This is designed so you can reach into your purse, hand her a mask, and say, “Can you please put this on.”

You’re not asking. You’re not offering. You’re telling her to put the mask on.

While I want to assume that everyone who isn’t wearing masks is not wearing masks because they can’t access them, I have made this pattern with the awareness that many people aren’t wearing masks because they believe it to be unnecessary (because Bernie Sanders is a robot and Italy isn’t real), so there is absolutely an element of attempting to encourage non-believers into wearing a mask to avoid being socially ostracized.

This mask filters as effectively as a cotton reusable mask (maybe better!), but it’s visibly disposable. This negates the “I can’t take your handcrafted handiwork,” excuse that someone might give when refusing a mask.

If the person you’re giving the mask to accuses you of taking PPE away from hospitals, you can calmly say, “I made this so that I can give them to people. I’m giving this one to you. It’s for everyone’s safety.”

Also, these really don’t take very much time to make and they’re extremely inexpensive.

You can also make these for your family and friends. The masks can be washed a couple of times and reused, but they’re mostly disposable. This makes them great for people who tend to lose stuff all the time (like kids), or if you don’t have the ability to wash your masks regularly, or if you would just prefer disposable masks. These are also a great option if you can get the towels at a store you’re already going to, to avoid having to make a stop at the fabric stores and exposing yourself to all of the nonsense that’s coming from Green Store allowing 40 people to pack next to the cut counter like sardines.

And, who knows, maybe that person you gave this to actually wasn’t able to find a mask, and will be grateful for your gift. I have no faith in humanity, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.

You need to start out with a roll of shop towels. There was a studio in LA that found that hydro-knit shop towels were extremely good filtration. We’re going to save the hydro-knit towels for people making masks that need extremely good filtration, and we’re going to use Scott shop towels. They’re a carded-web nonwoven; they are washable and reusable, but also disposable. Each mask takes roughly 1.5 towels, meaning you can make 36 masks out of this $3 roll if you want. Shop towels will dull your fabric scissors, so use your paper scissors when cutting them.

You’ll also want a ball of string. I’m using Sugar and Cream cotton knitting yarn, because I already had it on hand. It doesn’t stretch, is a good thickness for tying a bow into, doesn’t slip when tied, and doesn’t irritate the face or ears. However, string from whatever hardware department you got your shop towels from will probably work. I’d avoid sisal, but that’s about it.

You’ll need to cut two pieces of towel that are each 8″x9″. It’s okay if one of the pieces has the perforation for the towel to tear away, as long as the other piece doesn’t have a perforation. Stack those two layers on top of each other. (My image shows cutting a 16″ piece of towel and then cutting it in half)

Make a few pleats in the front of the mask. Leave about 2″ between the top of the mask and the first pleat. You also want to make sure the bottom pleat doesn’t hang over the bottom of the towel. 

The folds of the pleats should point down towards the bottom of the mask.

Your total piece is probably around 5″ tall at this point.

Flip the mask over (so that the pleats are now facing upward), pin the pleats in place, and fold the top of the mask down and pin. We flip the mask over and pin because it will allow us to do most of the sewing in one step, which saves time and labor.

Sew up one side, across the top, and down the other side. You can leave the bottom open like I did, or you can sew a line across it. If you’re feeling fancy, you can put a folded up piece of aluminum foil in the top of the mask to work as a nose wire. I’m assuming that whoever I give these masks to is going to just throw it away, so I skip this step.

Fold the sides in and sew a line of stitching to hold each in place. This will make the channels for your tie string, so leave yourself some space and don’t sew the tops and bottoms closed.

Cut a piece of string about 50″ long. Thread the string down one side, take a u-turn at the bottom, and feed it up the other side. This allows you to put the string behind your neck and then tie it at the top of your head. It’s a lot more efficient to tie it on this way than to use two ties.

Elastic is a rarity these days, so save that stuff for masks you’re making for healthcare workers or for people you actually like. Random mouth-coughers in Walmart get string.

And there you go! Takes less than 50 cents to make one, takes less than 10 minutes to make one, and layers of fabric over your face protect others better than no fabric over your face.

This pattern is modified from the Clover mask pattern. The modifications are to make it faster to construct, and to take advantage of the fact that shop towels don’t fray.

If you’re making several disposable masks for personal use, you can pull the string out of a mask before you throw it out, and thread that string through a new mask. It saves you some money on string that way, since the string is largely uncontaminated.

Remember, when offering a mask to someone, hold it by the very edge, and offer it in such a way that the person taking it is less likely to touch your hands.

Be safe, make a basket full of these, dress as if you are a magical being, and go distribute them to strangers in Target. (Actually, don’t do that. Stay home unless you need to go shopping).