where are your gloves and your helmet?

( Since two of them are, well, plain black, there's not much reason to post photos of both. )


If y'all want me to work up one of these I have black fabric, white fabric, Wonder Woman fabric, sea glass print fabric, a little bit of Darth Vader fabric, a little bit of gray fabric with orange foxes on it, green fabric with gold snowflakes, and I think green marbled fabric around here somewhere. Ran out of Spider-Man and Captain Marvel, though. And Minecraft.

All the masks are in the mail, with the last one to go out currently sitting in my mailbox waiting for today's letter carrier to pick it up and start it on its way to Wisconsin. Yesterday's two were priority mail, so even though I'm currently waiting for their tracking numbers to show up in the click-n-ship interface, they're slated to arrive in Michigan and Queens before the 25th. (If I am very lucky the Queens ones will arrive before the end of Hanukkah but with the way things are postally I cannot be sure of that.) The ones going to Maine are due to arrive sometime today, although the tracking interface hasn't been updated since the 14th. Same deal for the one to my mother. The ones going to Virginia are due to arrive tomorrow but reached the Richmond distro center this morning around 3 AM so who knows. The ones to Boston and Washington State are already delivered.

The Christmas card to my sister and her kids is in the mailbox with today's mask package. The gifts I ordered for her kids on Redbubble and Etsy have mostly arrived at my parents'. The ones I ordered from Target arrived at her place. Dad's gift was shipped, although I should probably order him one more 'cos Mom suggested it and I may be able to get it to him on time.

I should package up that necklace and send it to my mom. I'd been considering it even though my sister and I already bought her something like a month ago.

I have a Christmas gift for a friend in New Hampshire but there's the slight problem of getting the thing packaged and sent as it's a fairly large box and I don't have the shipping packaging for it, much to my sorrow. I'll apologize to her later. Also I'll give her the silver-filled and turquoise necklace I made her a while back, it's got a central piece that's a bit tricky to fit in a standard necklace box. I may buy myself a little time by sending her something from potatoparcel.com if they can deliver by Christmas, because nothing makes a Christmas splash quite like receiving your holiday message engraved on a potato.

Made a contribution to the Boston Globe's Globe Santa fund this year. Soon as my new bank card arrives (some knob stole my number and used it on Priceline) I'll make another one. Probably one to the Home for Little Wanderers, too, and just to be fair, make a donation to Masbia back in New York.

I'll call my other family members if it's feasible to do so (Dad has seven living brothers and sisters, virtually all of whom are married and have kids, many of whom have kids of their own) this weekend, since in non-plague years the weekend before Christmas is the weekend when Dad's family celebrates Family Christmas. This allows the individual siblings and niblings* to go to their spouses' families or have Christmas at home with their own families as they choose.

Think I've got everything more or less settled. I might actually be able to see about working on learning to sew knit fabric now.

I'll be sending out most of the ear loop masks today, although I need one more snail address. Should be able to finish the ones that I need ties for tonight or tomorrow.

I also have a pile of random masks that did not fit me all that well but that were better than nothing and that have crude or ill-fitting ties/ear loops on 'em. No boning, no nose strips. If you want one for your own personal modification or, I dunno, attaching to works of sculpture or something, let me know and I'll send you one. Most of them were part of my learning process but if you have a use for them or can make them better you are welcome to them.

This is the ear loop variety. I’ll do a fabric ties version next. The boning is cable zipties cut to the appropriate length, with the cut edges filed down to avoid damaging fabric. They are removable. The nose strip is a coffee bag closure and is also removable. Outer layer is quilter’s cotton backed with fusible interfacing, interior is consumer grade polypropylene (Oly Fun brand), the layer touching the face is 600 threadcount cotton. Hand wash and air dry, ideally in water no hotter than you can stand to put your own hands in, although the site I got the instructions from is run by a retired nurse who works with fabric and who says that it should hold up through a lot of washes even if a bit of bleach is used in the water.Basically, ‘wash it like a bra’ and it should be fine.

I will be making one all cotton version with two layers of 600 threadcount instead of an Oly Fun layer. That should be okay to machine wash on delicate and machine dry.

Oh, yeah, happy Thanksgiving to my American readers, joyous November 26th to everyone else.

The blue and green and sea glass print fabrics I ordered arrived and have been pre-washed. I also got a green fabric with snowflake print on it.

I am almost certainly out of Spiderman fabric. I think I have some Minecraft fabric and possibly some Darth Vader fabric left. Not sure, I'd have to check. There may be musical note fabric left too. I think I used up all the rainbow puzzle piece fabric already, though.

Blue cotton thread, yes. Green thread... I think I have green cotton. I know I have green polyester. Also I have white polyester thread. And other colors but I do at least try to match when I can.

Plenty of 600 thread count left. More in the light teal than white stripe but I have that.

Got most of the roll of Oly Fun polypropylene for inner layers still left. It was a three yard roll, I should be fine even having carved out material for two more masks than I intend to actually make.

Got some chiffon left if it's absolutely needed but I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather use the Oly Fun. It's not surgical grade but it's the same material they use for the blue layer in surgical masks and it's recommended by WHO, plus it's so much easier to cut and manipulate than chiffon.

Almost finished with my first pack of fusible interfacing but I have a second pack of the same kind that I haven't even opened yet so I'm good there.

Good amount of 1/4" elastic available for ear loops or elastic head ties or elastic bands across the back of the head (more comfortable than ear loops if one lives in a state where the governor has mandated mask use for longer periods than merely coming within sneezing distance of another human). Also got a bunch of old T-shirts from thredUP online thrift store that can be cut into nice soft elastic cotton ties for standard knot-behind-the-head ties as needed, bought those back when I was trying to learn to sew and didn't realize that knit cotton was one of the hardest materials to work on with a sewing machine, le sigh.

Long story short, I'll be ironing fabric today and starting in on people's masks for December.

Working on learning to add boning to masks to keep the fabric off the wearer's face, since my biggest issue so far has been that when I take a deep breath the lining tries to adhere itself to my nostrils. Have been using 8-inch plastic zipties so far and cutting the fastening bit off the end, then using a jewelry file on the corners before encasing the things.

Still a little awkward at the process and have not yet attempted to combine boning with a nose fitting strip. one step at a time. right now I have a bunch of mask pieces that are left over from cutting out too many parts from various fabrics, I'll be using those as my test beds for learning boning.

might have to get longer zip ties to go all the way across the face, not really sure.

the latest round of eBay purchases arrived:

- an Olfa rotary cutter because the rotary cutter that came free with my bias tape makers is a two-bit low-end piece of crap that I do not think would be improved at all by replacing the blade
- an Olfa rotary cutter mat because the back of my biggest sketch pad is not a good thing to lean on when cutting
- a roll of Oly Fun polypropylene craft material because polypropylene is the material they make surgical mask filters out of, and while Oly Fun is the brand name for the public version which is not as highly filtering as the surgical version (more porous, I think) it is still hydrophobic and does the electrostatic charge differential thing that is important to filtering out droplets, and also because chiffon leaves teeny polyester bits EVERYFREAKINGWHERE when I try to cut it, so I'm going to combine the Oly Fun with a 600 thread count inner liner and a standard cotton outer layer and work from there
- a fat quarter of dark green quilter's cotton printed with shiny gold snowflakes because I wanted something vaguely seasonal and pretty goddammit for the outside of a mask for myself (Dad is getting his mask made from leftover musical note fabric I bought for my nephew)
- Yes, Prime Minister on DVD, because Netflix didn't have the series any more and because completely unrelated purchases can arrive on the same day sometimes

Dad reports he's having trouble with his glasses fogging up, so I'm working on something like this:



Not my best photography but it will do for the moment. I am very proud of some of the zigzag work I did for the seams but I am going to have to find a way to get a better photo of that before posting it.

Quilter's cotton outside. 600 threadcount cotton against the face. dual layer polyester chiffon in the middle. Not, admittedly, actual filter fabric- but if Argonne Labs' results apply to the real world, it's a pretty good shot.

Going to see about making probably two more. One with a metal strip permanently installed in the nose bit, one with a pocket for add/remove option before washing. Masks don't help as much if they're not secure against your face at the edges. ETA: also going to use shorter elastic for the ear bits, or possibly use behind-the-head ties instead. I think Dad prefers the tie option.

This one's also from Made by Barb. It's somewhat harder than the last one, because she designed it to provide more forward space for the nose and mouth without putting a seam over the nose... which means that it involves curved pieces and slightly weird dimensions.
( Read more... )

The design is trickier to manage than I'd thought. I'm not used to joining curves and I think I got several elements of the process wrong. Fortunately this is a mask and all the real 'ew, you did what?' mistakes are on the inside. The ear loops are 'thick hair no metal' elastics from Sally Beauty Supply, as I didn't feel like fiddling with knotted quarter-inch elastic and had no desire to spend time stitching loops shut by hand.

(Yes, I could theoretically sew the elastic using my sewing machine. I am still not very good at getting 1/4 inch elastic to behave under the presser foot.)

The mask fits more closely to the nose than other models I've made so far. I found instructions on how to add a pocket for a metal strip on another site; the pattern at Made by Barb mentions ironing in a strip of metal using fusible webbing, but I wanted to be able to take the metal out and throw the mask in the washer. I'll have to take a photo of the pocket side at some point. I documented the process of making this design so I'd have an idea of what to expect in future, I just don't seem to have a picture of the completed mask from the inside. The metal strip in this case is a strip of aluminum foil that was originally cut to 8 inches by 6 inches, then folded in half width-wise five times and then cut in half. I don't have flat aluminum on hand, I didn't have access to a piece of aluminum I could cut, and I didn't feel like trying to make jewelry wire behave.

The Captain Marvel material is quilting cotton. The lining is 600 thread count pillowcase fabric that I got on eBay, originally from Walmart. The extra visible seams on the mask are because I sewed two layers of polyester chiffon to the outer fabric for filtration. Probably going to go back to sewing the chiffon to the faceward side next time. That or attach one layer of the chiffon to each side, it might be easier that way.