How Your mask is Made
I’ll admit I had a bit of an ulterior motive when I first got the crazy idea to make masks but first a little background…
As a side benefit of my day job, I get to read a LOT and this has developed several niche areas of interest for me including historical disasters. It turns out there are amazing books written for young readers about this topic and I can’t get enough of books about the sinking of the Titanic or the Great Molasses Flood or you guessed it, past pandemics including Yellow Fever and the Spanish Flu. I also have a great love for Japanese culture so I used all of this background knowledge to see the future – face masks for all.
There was just one problem, even on the most frigid days (polar vortex ring a bell) in New York/New Jersey, I couldn’t stand anything on my face. I would wear layers galore (think Joey from Friends) but I couldn’t bear to wrap the scarf around my face. So I was going to have a BIG problem in the age of the face mask. This resulted in me doing one of my favorite things – research! I fired up the ol’ internet and got to looking for the best light-weight, safest, and least annoying face mask. I spent a week tweaking, sewing and torturing my favorite focus group (thank you St. Romains). The result is the mask I have now made hundreds of times. So have you ever wondered how it is done?
I work in batches of about 5-10 orders at time. This helps me to maximize my cutting time. I can plan out how many sizes/types of fabric I need to cut in one batch. Sometimes I think there are too many choices but what keeps me sane is I rarely make the same mask twice. I can use my creativity in making fun combinations. Plus one of my main goals is filling the world with fun, beautiful masks.
After cutting and utilizing my love of storage bins, I seam the front fabric with an extra layer of nonwoven interfacing and sew the interior front seam.
Next comes the joining of the mask. This can be a little tricky but if I did a good job cutting it goes together fairly quickly. I also take the extra step of using clips rather than pins. Thank you Mom for having every sewing gizmo under the sun!
Top and bottom seams are sewn and then - BOOM - the fun part of turning the mask and making sure the combination of fabrics works.
A quick press and it is time for elastic.
Narrative Detour ahead: Oh elastic, who knew you were so important and such a rare commodity… The biggest challenge to this enterprise has been sourcing elastic but crafters are a hearty and creative bunch. There is no challenge too big. I tried so many ideas I found on the internet from hair accessories to ace bandages to spandex before settling on using jewelry elastic while I waited for the elastic cord that my masks now use. I had to have a thin elastic because I have tiny ears and I make a lot of masks for tiny ears. But I also needed something strong and semi-long lasting (washing your mask is critical but also degrades the materials). It also had to be something available. I still prefer this ultra thin elastic in my personal masks but I am now using a softer elastic that is actually what is used in medical masks.
Now back to the process…
The final step is packing the masks and sending them off. Total time to make a mask (excluding cutting time) is about 8 minutes. These seems fast but I feel the pressure to get masks out quickly. This is not always possible as I do sew around my full-time gig and on weekends so average turn around time is about 12-14 days based on my current volume of orders.
Thank you for all of your continued support and for caring enough to wear a mask. Be well!- Jana
