Hiding behind a mask

Right back at the start of lockdown, I did my usual thing when faced with an unknown or scary situation - I panic-read. I read all about masks, about the pros and cons of wearing them, and in great detail about how to make various designs of mask. And I rummaged around in my (embarrassingly large) collection of bits of fabric, and I set to work experimenting with different designs. The first mask was a pleated design and was laborious and frustrating to make. It's wearable but a bit scruffily finished. The next three were all variations on a shaped mask, and none of them fitted either BigBear or me. At this point I more or less gave up in disgust at my incompetence. Spending hours of my precious free time (and it took hours to make a single mask at the start) was just a bit too demoralising.

But then I watched another YouTube video on mask-making, and I decided it was absurd to have all the materials for making masks, and to want to have masks and not have another go at making them.

So I knuckled down and made some more.

I knew I could manage the pleated version, and had realised I could do it more efficiently if I made more than one at a time - cutting eight; stitching eight; pressing eight; pleating eight and over-stitching eight took maybe double the length of time that it took me to make the first one. So away I went. And then, buoyed on by my success, I returned to a different pattern of shaped mask with considerably more success. And then I realised that I'd made rather more masks than the three of us needed. So I offered them to a handful of friends. And then more friends asked for some, so I made some more. And then my in-laws wanted some too. And then a friend-of-a-friend. Which is how I've ended up making 30+ masks for friends, relations and hangers-on.

Being the kind of people that they are, my friends all offered to reimburse me for my efforts, but I'd seen Unicef running a "make one, give fifty" campaign, encouraging people who made masks to do so in return for donations to Unicef that could then fund masks for healthcare workers in areas of extreme poverty around the world.  Every £5 donation would buy 50 masks. So, hopefully, not only have I provided masks to those near or dear to me, but I have indirectly done so for those I will never see or know.

I've spent weeks not writing this post, as it feels all a bit smug and "la-la, look at me, aren't I philanthropic?" or, to use LittleBear's phrase, it's a bit showy-offy. But, on the other hand, it's what I've spent a lot of my evenings doing, and I have very little else to write about. Also, wearing masks is looking like a good idea all round, so in the spirit of pour encourager les autres, I can assure you that with the right pattern and right equipment, they're quite easy to make.

"Mass" production

And if you can't make them, and live close enough to me that dropping them round or posting them isn't absurd... I could make some for you, in return for a donation to Unicef.


Footnote: for those who care about such things, the masks are multilayer, with the inner layer being a non-woven synthetic fabric and the outer layers being tightly woven cotton. They have a flexible metal nose bridge to improve fit and elastic loops over the ears. The shaped masks come in three sizes, from one that fits LittleBear all the way up to one that fits BigBear, via a middling one for me.