how I made my mask - it's easy!

I promised to show Debbie and Joanna how I made our facemasks so I made another one taking photos of each step and am putting it here to share with anyone who wants to use it. This is NOT meant to be a mask for our wonderful NHS workers. It's NOT a medical mask. It's just meant to try and keep us a wee bit safer when we're allowed out after lockdown. I don't make any claims that it will keep us safe from coronavirus but it might help.

There are a LOT of photos but it's really easy, honest! I only took lots of photos to try and explain what I did - it would be much easier to explain if you were in my sewing room and I could show you but that's not allowed right now so we do what we can!

Here's what the finished mask will look like.

What you need - finely woven cotton fabric. 2 pieces 8" wide by 7" high. They don't need to be different fabrics - I just used different ones here to be able to show front and back more easily.

2 pieces 6¾" long of 3mm wide soft elastic or soft cord elastic. The important thing is the "soft" part. If you use a firm elastic, your ears will get sore! This is a good time to use up that cheap elastic you thought was a bargain but it turned out too soft to use. That's what mine is!
*edit* This photo is the uncut elastic. Joanna got herself all confused about how long her cut elastic was in comparison to the photo. Sorry about that!

Measure down 1" from the top of your front fabric at each side and pin one end of your elastic pieces there. Pin the bottom ends 1" up from the bottom edge. Make sure you have the tops of your pins sticking outwards so you can pull them out at the next stage.

Pin your back fabric to your front fabric with right sides together. Pin all the way around leaving about a 4" gap so you can turn the mask. I use double pins to show me where to stop. (I started sewing at the white pin on the right of those double pins.)

Sew all around with a 3/8" seam - leaving the gap open. Don't sew over the pins - take them out as you go. When you get to the elastics, leave the pins in as long as you can without stitching over them so you don't lose the elastics! When you get to the elastics, do a backstitch over them to hold them more securely. I'm pointing at that backstitching in this photo.

Press. Clip the corners diagonally - close to the stitching but not too close!

Turn the mask through the gap and poke out the corners. Press folding the seams for the gap into the inside. Pin the gap closed. No photo of that - don't know why!

I'm going to show how do to the pleats using a template. You can do it without the template but I find it easier with it. To make the template, take a piece of paper or card and cut it to 6¼" tall. The width doesn't matter - mine is about 4" wide. The 6¼" is the height your mask is meant to be at the stage we're at. PLEASE don't worry if your mask isn't exactly that size. As long as it's close, it doesn't matter!! None of my masks have been exactly that size and they're fine!

Okay, fold your paper in half lengthwise. Draw along that centre fold line. Instead of me taking you through all the steps to make the template, I'm going to show the photo of the completed template - I hope it makes sense!

The top foldline is 1¾" down from the top edge and the bottom foldline is 1¾" up from the bottom. Each pleat is 3/8" deep. Draw in all your lines.

Fold your mask in half and put pins in where the centre is.

Open your mask back up and put the template close to the edge at the right hand side matching the centre fold on the template to the centre pin on your mask.

Where you've drawn the lines, put pins in your mask.

As you can see from that picture, my template is bigger than my mask but, as long as the centre folds match up, we're good.

Repeat the pinning on the left side.

Okay, let's get pleating. This is the bit that's harder to explain than it is to do.

Take the right side of your mask and fold it on the centre foldline and fold that downwards - towards the bottom of the mask. The second pin is where the back fold line is so you're folding on two lines for each pleat - one at the back and one at the front. So, in this photo, the back fold is where the blue pin is and the front fold is where the orange pin is. I pinch the front fold with my fingers and fold it all along that blue pin then fold it downwards and pin it to the mask. (See I told you it was harder to explain than to do!!)

Reposition your pins to hold it in place.

Next fold on the top foldine again folding the pleat downwards.

Repeat with the bottom foldine. You might find that the folds overlap slightly - just move them down or up a bit so that they're lying free of each other.

Repeat the same procedure on the left side, folding all the folds downwards.

Stitch all the way around your mask about 1/8" from the edge. When you've sewn down the pleats, turn the mask and sew back over them again then turn, sew over them again and continue around the rest of the mask. Take your time especially as you sew over the pleats. Again, don't sew over the pins. This will close the gap you'd left for turning earlier. This photo shows the extra stitching over the pleats.

This is how your mask will look now.

Give it a press to flatten the pleats.

This is how the back looks. You could wear it either way - remember the pleats need to fold down towards your chin, not up to your nose!

And me wearing the finished mask - no make-up, in need of a haircut but who isn't these days? LOL

I hope that helps. You could add in a channel for some wire at the top - your mask would then not be reversible! I didn't do that because I couldn't find my florist's wire. I couldn't have tossed it before we moved house, could I? Surely not! *gasp*

Anyway, as I said already, these masks are NOT meant for health professionals. I don't know if they'll keep us safe but we do what we can.

Let me know if there's anything you don't understand and I'll do my best to explain it better.

Stay at home. Stay safe. We WILL meet again! 😷💕

the last thing on my mind

I just wanted to let you all know why there's not much blogging going on around these parts lately. My mum was taken into hospital 3 weeks ago having had a slight heart attack. As you can imagine, it was a scary time but 4 days later, mum was back in her care home looking not much worse for the experience.

That was a Thursday. Two days later on the Saturday, she was taken back to the hospital again having had another "cardiac event". They kept her longer this time - 5 days instead of 4!

For about a week, she seemed to be improving but last Thursday, I just didn't like the look of her. I don't know why I thought it but just felt there was something not quite right. Sure enough, that afternoon I got a phone call from the home to tell me she had a chest infection but that she wasn't in pain and was quite content in herself.

I was back in to see her on Sunday morning with Joanna and I remember saying to Joanna as we drove home, "Granny's not well". At lunchtime, the nurse from the home phoned to say that they'd got the ambulance back to take her to the hospital again. Her oxygen levels were low and her blood pressure was way down. It turns out she now has pneumonia. Her breathing is awful. She isn't swallowing and so is on intravenous fluids and antibiotics and heaven knows what else. I have cried every single time I have come out of visiting because I am so scared of what mum is going through.

I was just putting my coat on this afternoon to go to visit her when my Auntie (mum's sister) phoned me for her monthly update on mum. She and I spoke (and cried) for a while and she said a few things to me that I really needed to hear. I felt a bit better after that and actually didn't cry coming out of the hospital this afternoon. (Needless to say, I'm crying as I type this but that's just me. A crier and not in the least ashamed of it!)

It's so hard to deal with my head right now. I want mum to get better - obviously - but, I don't want her to be in pain or uncomfortable. I want what's best for mum and, at the moment, I just don't know what that is. :o(

Anyway, that's why I'm not here much. Blogging is the last thing on my mind at the moment.

on the mend

First of all, thank you all for your kind comments on my last post.

I'm not fully recovered from my bout of flu but I am much, much better. I still have a bad cough and not much energy but I am definitely on the mend. Hoooray!!!!

Unfortunately, it would seem that I've passed it on to Douglas. As I type, he's sitting on the couch sneezing and coughing and generally feeling yucky. I hope he doesn't get exactly what I had. All joking about man-flu aside, I don't think he'd be as good a patient as I was in that I lay on the couch for 3 days and barely moved. I don't think Douglas could do that even if I sat on him! Fingers crossed it's "just a cold" like he says it is. We'll see.

Today I went into my sewing room and made something. I deliberately didn't want to tackle anything too complicated so I dug out the bindings I had cut out last week ..

I joined them into long strips and pressed them in half making quite a few metres of bindings. The smallest bit was 7.5 metres - about 295"!! This photo shows the colours much better - the pink spotty one is bright pink, not salmon pink like it appears in the photo above.

Not a lot done but it's a start and, after the week I've had, a start is better than nothing! :o)

flu

"Flu causes a sudden high temperature (check), headache (check) and general aches and pains (check), tiredness (check) and a sore throat (check). You can also lose your appetite (check), feel nauseous (check) and have a cough.(check)

Flu symptoms can make you feel so exhausted (check) and unwell (check) that you have to stay in bed (check) and rest until you feel better (check)".

Copied from the NHS website.

~ ~ ~

I'm on my 3rd day of this and, although I am getting better, I'm still not well.

And the worst of it ... I had my flu jab! Mind you, I keep telling myself, if I feel this bad having had the jab, how bad would I have been without it?

Hopefully, I'll get back to some semblance of normality soon!

a week's worth

A week since I blogged? Really? So what's happened this past week?

Douglas had a birthday so we had sandwiches and cakes for tea that night.

Joanna made him cakes in the shape of a golf course complete with a fairway where the ball is, a bunker and green with a flag. Genius! And it tasted great too! :o)

Tilly was at last allowed out for walks so we took her to the beach. The tide was coming in (fast) and she wasn't really too impressed by that fact!

Douglas tried to reassure her that all was well but I'm not sure she was convinced. (I'm not sure what Joanna is doing here. I don't think Joanna knows what she's doing here! LOL)

We went up off the beach on to the higher path which she liked a lot.

She went as far as her lead would let her.

And had stops along the way just for a wee breather.

She's now been at the park too but I didn't take my camera so no photos of that. She enjoyed that tremendously and even met some big doggies there. Fun times!

As for me in the sewing room - I've done a bit of tidying and mending and other boring bits and bobs. Then I got myself a piece of squared paper thinking I might draw out a pattern for a quilt.

It's not nearly done yet - the way I've got it right now, the ninepatched bits will need to be 1 7/12". That's just not going to happen so I'm going to rethink those measurements until I have something I like - or at least something that I have on a ruler!

a walk in the park

I remembered to take my camera with me on our morning walk in the park. Here are just a few of the photos I took.

Looking through the trees over the bay to the other side of Kirkcaldy.

A zoomed-in view of the town.

I'm sure the park won't look so good in the rain/wind/snow of autumn and winter but, at the moment, it's glorious in all its sun-shiny green-ness. :o)

morning walks

Douglas and I have started going for a walk in our local park every morning. We're going before breakfast at about 7.30am. The park is really quiet at this time of the day which is lovely.

This morning, I said to Douglas that I was going to bring my camera with me one morning so I could take some photos of how the park looks at this time of year. He mentioned that he had his phone with him - of course he did, he never goes anywhere without it! LOL - so he said he would take a photo for me if I wanted. So he did. Here we are:

When he sent me the photo, I laughed out loud. Not at the shadows but at the bird poo on my leg! Next time we'll be more careful where we stand! LOL

sunshine, haar and tennis knuckle!

On Saturday, it was really warm here so I took my basket of oven gloves outside.

I had a lovely time out there pinning the labels on.

Today - Monday - we had our usual east coast haar* going on so no sitting outside for me. I just got on with the oven gloves in the sewing room instead. I have a sort of production line going on so I'm doing the same stages for all of them at one time. It does make it feel like I'm not getting on very quickly with them but I keep reminding myself that, when I get to the last stage with them, they'll all be done at once. Yay!!

After watching our Andy win Wimbledon yesterday - c'mon the Scots!! :oD - I wondered if we still had our swing ball and, sure enough, after digging in Douglas's Aladdin's Cave - aka the garage - we found it! So Jo and I had a few games until this terrible thing happened to me.

I don't know if the bruise shows up very well here but it's quite impressive. Jo claims it was my fault for hitting the ball with my finger but, hey, who batted the ball so hard in my finger's direction? :oD

* "Haar" is fog which rolls in off the North Sea coast especially in eastern Scotland and the north east of England.

Editing to say - my finger looks bad but it doesn't hurt at all. I can press the bruise and there's no pain whatsoever. Thankfully!