Masks…Are We Still Doing This?

I was hoping that once I was vaccinated I wouldn’t have to deal with masks any longer. I get anxious wearing one and then feel hot the whole time. And it doesn’t help when I have a conversation because I rely 90% on facial expressions when I communicate with people. I made a few masks at the beginning of this whole thing last year out of my cute fabric scraps but the design didn’t really work for me. Then I made some more in the tighter shape and added a piece of wire at the nose thinking that would help with my glasses fogging up. Those didn’t work great either but I figured I would just put up with them since I was working from home and getting groceries delivered and wasn’t planning on going out much. Then I was all excited to get vaccinated thinking we were going to be done with all the mask stuff but I still need to wear one most places. And then we got the call that we’re going to have to come back to the office.

So in the spirit of taking lemons and making lemonade, I decided to make yet more masks but try to find something that was going to work better for me. I was buying fabric at my favorite online site, Stash Fabrics, and came across this cute mask panel. I had seen these earlier in the year but didn’t want to commit to making them at the time. So I went ahead and bought the fabric panel. It turned out to be a great decision because the masks are cute and the way they had me sew them worked better than the way I was doing it before.

The panel comes with eight of the fitted mask styles (if you use your own fabric to back them) and eight of the boxy style. I decided I would just make the fitted ones and maybe I’ll use the boxy ones for pouches or something. The designs are collected from several different fabric designers so it’s a fun variety and I can see myself wearing these to work. Also, because of the thinness of the fabric, I can breathe easily (yes, I know that’s mostly psychological but it works for me). I decided that I would back them with a similar color fabric rather than white because the fabric was so thin I was worried about it being to different, especially on the darker designs. So I set off for Joann’s to get some fat quarters in matching colors. For the designs that had two completely different colors I had to try and figure out which side to put which color on. I was (mostly) successful in lining them up correctly.

Now I have some cute masks to wear when I go out and about. I think I’ll still have the fog issue but hopefully it won’t be too bad.

Mask Panel: Ruby Star Face Mask Panel #2