Monday, May 18, 2020

What I've Been Working On

No, not the bright strippy spiral.

More masks.

My SIL is very talented and artistic in many ways, but she doesn't sew. Her county opened up last week and mine opens up today, but both require everyone age two and up to wear a mask. She has a lot of grandchildren, eight of whom need masks. Her husband's job requires him to go into hospitals, and he needs more masks, too. (He's the one I made this mask for).

She bought fabrics and attempted to make masks for her family. No go. She called me in distress and asked if I could help - of course I could! She brought her fabrics over and stayed for lunch and conversation. It was so good to just visit!

So over the course of three days I made 33 more masks. Most are kid size and a few are adult size. She wanted me to use her cute fabrics - superhero and shark themed -  for masks for my grandson also. I made this batch for my son and grandson, and all the ones in the photo above for SIL and her family.

I didn't have any elastic so I used tee shirt strips. We were out of twist ties for the nose wire, so DH went to the hardware store and found soft wire in the garden center that worked really well.

It's really soft and flexible and it has a thick rubbery coating. After cutting 4" pieces we stretched the coating so the ends of the wire were deep inside the ends of the rubber and wouldn't scratch anyone. I replaced the twist tie wire in my own mask with this and it works really well, flexible enough to shape over my nose easily and soft enough to be comfortable. And it kept my glasses from fogging up because of the snug fit.

Before I got into sweatshop mode making masks, I was working on the beach baby quilt for new grandma Valerie. I was so into it that I forgot to take photos. I'll have finish photos of Valerie's quilt on Friday, but here's a sneak peek.



Link ups:
Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Love Laugh Quilt

4 comments:

  1. Great tip on the garden wire! What size squares did you cut for the kid sized masks? Looking forward to seeing Beach Baby all quilted up!

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  2. Thanks for the nose wire tip - bet is MUCH better than twist ties (more durable).

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  3. Haven't made a mask in a week or so, but want to try the Tshirt straps--fabric ties and my very long hair tend to get caught up together! I did sew elastic in dozens of N95 masks for Guild, tho....
    Love spiral quilting and plan to try this again on a small project!

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  4. You've been busy! Hopefully masks are mostly behind you now and you can keep quilting. I've been working on some orphan block tops and using a few of your donations! It makes me smile to put them to work :)

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