Pandemic Log: Homemade Mask Making

It’s been a year. For those who also got into the world of fabric mask making or are curious about my personal experience, here’s a look back:

When it became clear that hospitals were running out of PPE, my colleagues in the lab asked if I could help make fabric masks for the phlebotomists - they would be most at risk among lab staff as they enter all the patient rooms for blood collection.

It’s strange to even talk about it now because it just seems so unreal - did that really happen? I will note that in the end, our hospital policy did not allow staff to wear fabric masks due to quality control concerns, but this is what happens in a pandemic - things are happening so fast, information keeps changing, sometimes people on the ground have to get creative.

Anyways, I started with research into different possible mask patterns online. Though the resources were nothing like they are now, thankfully some people were ahead of the game and had a lot of information on appropriate materials and layers. A lot of American hospitals were using two layers of tight-knit cotton, reinforced with interfacing, long before Health Canada recommended it.

Sourcing material and getting help really brought our little lab community together. There were people who gave me tons and tons of fabric. Others offered to help pre-cut the fabric for me. One person gave me some heavy duty wire to make nose pieces. I got even more wire in-house from empty bags that would normally be thrown out - my colleagues ripped off the wire parts and saved them for me, bless them. All of this generosity made my heart full.

I was definitely not lacking in materials, all except for one thing - elastic! You know about the toilet paper shortage of 2020, but did you know about the worldwide elastic shortage? Once people scrambled for mask making materials, elastic sold by the yard (specifically the ones that were a good width for ear loops) became very scarce. I’m talking no elastic in local fabric shops, craft stores, not even online!

Because of the number of masks I needed to make, I immediately went with an alternative tie-back design, using bias tape. Eventually though, the bias tape also ran out, and to make my own strips of fabric would be too time consuming, so onto another alternative.

I discovered some stretchy fabric in my old stash that looked like an athletic jersey material - it didn’t fray when you cut it, and as a bonus they didn’t hurt your ears after prolonged use - win win!

Before I ran out of this stretchy fabric, I kept on the lookout for another ear loop material. I noticed some people online were using chunky yarn that looked like long strips of tshirt material, so when I saw them in the store… The online community also gave me the idea to use beads on the ends of the ear loops to make them adjustable, and that I think was one of the best additions - before that, I was either measuring people’s nose-to-ear distances or guessing!

Over the course of all this ear loop hunting, I also went through different mask designs. The simplest and most commonly used design was this one.

It’s made from two rectangles of fabric and is one of the fastest to make if you don’t include adding the nose wire and an interfacing layer.

Though this design was good, the overall fit wasn’t as snug and some people found it sat too close to the face, making it feel restricting. I ended up finding a more shaped design here.

With this design I was able to create pockets so that ear loops were removable, should they need to be replaced or swapped out for a different kind (this was all happening during my experimenting with different materials, hence the need for flexibility). This design also allowed for a pocket to insert additional filters if desired (at the time, people were talking about using anything from coffee filters to vacuum bags). I never ended up using this feature myself, but it was a handy addition. The one downside to this design was that the pattern wasn’t a rectangle, so I had to trace and cut it out, leaving lots of little bits of fabric that went unused (though I will have a story about that in a future post so stay tuned!). There were also a lot more steps involved in sewing the pieces together to achieve that 3D shape.

Almost all the masks I made for family, friends and coworkers were in one of the designs I just mentioned. I wasn’t looking for any more designs, but I happened to stumble upon someone who shared her designs on Youtube

I ended up trying one of her designs because the fit looked better than my last design, and best of all, the pattern and steps were much simpler. If you follow the link above, the template download is available in the video description.

As you may have already noticed in the pictures, some of my masks had some extra bling - the last part of my mask-making journey was my foray into free motion embroidery!

Free motion is a way of setting up your sewing machine so that you can sew in any direction you want, which allows you to essentially draw with the needle.

I never knew this technique existed until I saw a book in a craft store - it was written by an amazing Australian artist called Meredith Woolnough, who solely uses free motion embroidery in her work.

I was planning on trying out free motion on some clothing, but since I was making masks, I thought, why not put embroidery on masks?

This is definitely not something you do if you need a mask ASAP, especially if you’re like me and you don’t have a fancy sewing machine that has an embroidery function - it means having to take off the sewing foot every time you want to remove your fabric - and you also need to compensate for all the little holes you poke into your fabric after you embroider - I did that by adding an extra layer of un-embroidered fabric underneath.