Since the studio is temporarily closed because of quarantine, I’ve been doing a lot of sewing. Mostly masks-for myself, my family, the medical community and anyone who has asked.
I’ve also been getting asked what templates I used, so I figured I’d make a blog post to share everything I’ve found about mask making in one blog.
But before I get into all the mask making info, here are some local groups you can join, donate too, help, buy from, etc:
Give Back
The Coding Sharks School, in Jax, needs donations to make shields for medical workers.
Feed the medical community www.FeedTheFrontLineNEFL.org
We have a group for the 904 area where medical personnel post their needs and also mask makers come to sell or donate masks. You can join it on Facebook here.
Another group you might be interested in is Jax Help for Healthcare.
Fabric:
Cotton fabric–many use the fleece on the mouth side for comfort.
You can pick up fabric at Joann‘s (order online and they’ll deliver it to your car. ALSO, if you go in, they were giving away a free mask making kit, one for each customer. It should make 2-4 masks). Download their app on your phone for coupons.
Fabric.com is another good one, but because of COVID they are limiting the types of things you can purchase, so the cheaper fabric is sometimes not available. Scroll to the bottom of their page and sign up for their newsletter to get 10% off.
Spoonflower is kind of like Etsy but for fabric. You’ll find some fun ones there.
This material is supposed to be better than N95: Haylard H-600 2 ply
You can see a video about it here:
Elastic
The local stores seem to be running quite short on elastic. You can buy flat or round elastic.
Flat elastic holds better for sewing and you don’t have to knot the ends, the down side is, it probably bothers ears more and you want to make sure you lay it correctly while sewing so it lays flat in use.
The round skinny elastic is what I bought and what I use. I figured it would be better for wearing. The only downside I’ve found is I have to tie the ends to help keep it from coming out of the mask. I bought this from Amazon, it’s 109 yards. I’ve made over 100 masks and I don’t think I’ve used even half of this! Def. a great value.
Side note, if you want to make the mask more fitted around the nose, you can buy some pipe cleaners. Standard size, cut in half. I tried to order them off Joanns.com and they didn’t have them, but they did have them in store, and you have to go inside to get them. Or you can order some off Amazon.
General Info About Fabrics and Filter Material
No Sew Mask
Here’s the text info and the video:
And another one.
Rectangle Basic Mask
Pleated with interfacing template
Rectangle Mask with Pocket
Other Face Mask Templates
No pleat template/fitted.
Fitted with pocket for filter template.
Use your Cricut!
How to Clean a Mask
This has a video on how to make one but also goes into how to clean a mask.
If you decide to buy N95s:
On the news, N95 seems to be the best, but when I went to buy them online, I found different codes, if you’re concerned about where you buy them from I found this list of codes as to where each comes from:
N95 (United States NIOSH-42CFR84)
FFP2 (Europe EN 149-2001)
KN95 (China GB2626-2006)
P2 (Australia/New Zealand AS/NZA 1716:2012)
Korea 1st class (Korea KMOEL – 2017-64)
DS (Japan JMHLW-N)
And here is an article about the different types.
In conclusion
I hope you find all these links and videos helpful!
Christy Whitehead Photography
www.Jaxphotographer.com
Follow me on IG and FB: @Jaxphotographer