Bad Advice

I am still making face masks. I am longing to quilt, but I know for sure making face masks is what I am supposed to be doing. You want to know how I know? I had opened a brand new bolt of interfacing to make masks, and I ran out of that bolt. I thought I was done, but I decided to check in the closet and see if I had any other suitable interfacing to use for the inner layer of the face masks. What did I find in the closet, but a second unopened bolt of the same type of interfacing I had been using! That's really weird that I had two bolts of that type of interfacing, it's not something I use very often, so it's not something I normally would have a stockpile of. I still have a bit of the heavyweight interfacing I use in DH's scrub tops, and that I normally do buy by the bolt, but two bolts of lightweight interfacing? I do remember buying one bolt when Joann had a 60% off sale. I have no recollection of buying the second bolt. At any rate, with more interfacing to use, and a bit more wire left with more due to arrive this weekend, I'm still making masks. 

DS the Younger is in the Army, and he needs to wear solid black masks, I made 20 so he can share with his comrades in arms. I made he and his family some more fun masks to wear when he's off duty. The masks I made for on duty are only black on the outside, the lining is a cream color. Why did I do that???

There is some REALLY bad advice being given about making masks. If I see one more tutorial for reversible masks I'm going to lose my mind! I am no medical professional, but I am married to one. You know what? Real medical masks are NOT reversible, for good reason. Let's say you have one of these reversible masks. You are out doing a couple of essential errands. You don't want to wear the mask in the car, and since you are alone in the car you don't have to. You put the mask on to go into the grocery store. You do your grocery shopping, get in the car, remove your mask and drive to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. You go to put the mask back on, but which way did you have it on before? Does it matter?

Let's say you have a cold, it is still cold and flu season. You coughed a few times into your mask at the grocery store, and that side of the mask is "germy". If you now put the germ-y side of the mask out, the "germy" side is towards everyone else.

What if you are perfectly healthy, but someone you didn't notice without a mask coughed on you at the grocery store. If you put it on the opposite way, now the "germy" side is the side towards you, and you are breathing it in. 

This is greatly oversimplified, and I know a homemade mask is not going to keep all the germs out, but using them with some common sense added in will help. I line all my masks with a solid white or cream, though any color will work. The important thing is the sides shouldn't look alike, and it should be easily apparent which side is meant to wear towards your face. I've made a few with flannel linings, and those are easy to tell which is which too. I opted out of flannel, because it's starting to heat up in Southern Arizona, and I felt like it would soon be too hot to wear a flannel lined mask. 

Another piece of bad advice I've seen? Use waterproof fabric so the droplets can't get through. I understand their thought process, but evidently they forgot you need to BREATHE though the mask. Yeah, the tutorial suggesting using waterproof PUL fabric, not good advice. I've also seen tutorials with things that aren't going to make it through the wash, that's fine, but I'd consider those disposable, not reusable. I, personally, want to use materials that will survive the sanitize setting on my washing machine. 

There are some fantastic tutorials out there, and honestly, I'll be surprised if wearing a mask in public doesn't become mandatory, especially right after the shelter in place bans lift, whenever that will be. If you want to try making masks, and you have the supplies to do it, go ahead and try. In my opinion, whatever that's worth, the surgical style masks that start with a rectangle are going to fit more people. I've tried fitted masks from several different patterns I found online, and although I checked the scale on the patterns I printed, I found that the fitted masks are just that, fitted. I made several fitted masks from different patterns, and NONE of the ones I tried fit DH correctly. If I had taken the time to rescale the patterns, and made more prototypes, I'm sure I could have gotten a fitted style to work for him. Instead, I've given away 80-90 or so surgical style masks already, and I'm already making more. 

This is the bag of finished ones we haven't given away yet. DH has given masks away at the hospital, I've mailed some to family and friends, I've given some to neighbors. This is  two gallon ziploc bag, and I've already emptied it twice! I don't know exactly how many masks I've made at this point, but I think it's about 130-ish. I just had someone tell me that interfacing is very hard to find right now, so I'll likely make masks until I'm out of interfacing, or until the demand is gone. I'm guessing I'll run out of interfacing first. 

I find this kind of funny, I kept knocking the nose wires on the floor, so I decided I wanted to stand them up in a cup or something. My sewing room is no where near the kitchen, so I looked around, and found a solution. This is the thread I will use to quilt Miss E's big girl bed quilt. Her birthday is in May, so I need to finish this face mask project so I can get her quilt finished! Until then, the thread can corral the nose wires for face masks.

My sister moves to Tucson tomorrow, so I got her a housewarming gift 2020 style.

Oh yeah, I made her a face mask too ;-)