Back in March I decided to design my own version of a two-layer cotton face mask, because I wasn’t happy with any of the masks I’d sewn using the patterns that were being recommended by hospitals and governments in Europe and the US.
Those masks always had gaps at the sides of the cheeks or at the chin, or the mask just wouldn’t stay on the nose. I even tried adding unbent paper clips and pieces of pipe cleaner, to make a nose clip, but that didn’t work.
I already had cotton fabric at home, leftover from sewing projects I’d done before being struck with a rare disease. Along with thread, sewing machine needles; all the supplies I’d need to sew up some masks.
It took more than ten attempts, with me making 10+ prototype masks, before I finally came up with my own design. Then I made a slightly larger one for my sweetheart; a second pattern. My ‘patterns’, by the way, are pieces of cardboard taped together, because I kept tweaking my designs!
Just getting to that point was a challenge, because of chronic neuropathic pain in my right hand/wrist from CRPS. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, the same rare disease that has caused the ‘mild cognitive impairment’ with which I now struggle each day. But enough about that for now!
Once I’d made masks for my husband and for myself, I decided to make some for my dad and my elderly father-in-law. Then I thought these would be useful for my sister & her family, her in-laws. Then my aunts and uncles, my cousins.
This all kind of snowballed, until I found myself sewing about forty masks, as gifts, for my loved ones and extended family. Each mask was a gift, a way of saying “I love you” to family members scattered across the country.
Once I’d finally sewn a mask for each member of my extended family, I realized that we’d all need at least two masks – so that one could be in the wash and there would still be one ready to wear. So I started over again, making more masks, a few at a time.
I’d never have guessed that I’d end up cutting, pinning, and stitching more than eighty reversible cotton masks, but by the time I put my sewing machine away this morning – for a long while!! – I’d made eighty-five of them.
Because I have to use mostly my left (wrong) hand, it’s slow going. Because of my cognitive impairment, related to my rare disease, it’s even slower going. I’d often forget how to complete a step of sewing or cutting a mask, despite having just done that same step a few minutes ago.
Or I’d make the same mistake over a series of masks that I was trying to sew at the same time, and then have to unpick that seam on five or ten masks. And then start that seam over again on all of them.
It seems so strange to say this, but it was both enormously satisfying and enormously frustrating to make each mask. I can’t remember a single mask that I was able to complete without a hitch; without having to unpick a seam, or fix something that I’d done wrong along the way.
For this batch of five masks, with an adorable design of tree-climbing raccoons and squirrels that my husband picked out, I had to pull apart – or un-sew! – two different seams from each one. I’d inadvertently sewed the pieces of fabric together the wrong way, with the back of the fabric where the front should have been. Ugh!
At the same time, each time I finished a mask, I’d have the real pleasure of knowing: “I made this, for someone I care about.” That feeling is what kept me going, all the times I made mistakes because my brain just won’t work properly anymore. All the times when the neuropathic or joint pain in my fingers or wrist was excruciating.
All in all, I calculated that it took me at least four hours to make each mask. Each one is reversible, to give a choice of two fabrics – designs – to show on the outside, so it was as though I was sewing two masks and then joining them together back-to-back.
Four hours per mask, on the days when my pain and other symptoms weren’t so bad that I couldn’t sew at all; many days I’m not able to do much at all! It has taken four months, and I’m so glad I stuck with it.
On Friday I mailed the last batch of my home-made masks to cousins in BC and Ontario, and today I finished the last ones that I’ll deliver this week. Four hours per mask, over a period of four months, and I’m done.
The moral of this story? If I can sew a face mask, despite my rare autoimmune and neuroinflammatory disease, you can probably manage to wear one for the time it takes to do your shopping!!!
As always, thanks so much for stopping by. Now that I’ve finished my months-long project of sewing masks for my loved ones, there are a whole lot of things I want to share with you here on the blog. Stay tuned, and keep safe ‘-)