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Wellness

How to Make a Homemade Pandemic Mask with Things Found Around Your Home

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at SLU chapter.

What You’ll Need: 

  • A sewing machine 

  • Thread (color of your choice) 

  • Hair bands  

  • 100% cotton, cute fabric (a quarter of a yard long = 3 masks)  

  • Pins  

  • Scissors 

  • Fabric Chalk  

  • Tape measure  

 

Get Sewing, Girl: 

1. Stretch out your bands using a round bottle.  

making a pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

2. Wash and dry your fabric.  

3. Iron your fabric (ABSOLUTE MUST).  

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

4. Cut the fabric into the desired amount of 12 x 6 squares.  

pandemic mask homemade
Elyse Lewandowski

5. In order to make clean seam for the sides of your mask, you have to turn over the uneven edges and iron them down, about 1/8 of an inch.  

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

6. Then for the long side of the mask, you must flip the long edge you just ironed over another ½ inch to create the edging of your mask and secure it with pins.  

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

7. Now you’re ready to sew.  

8. Sew along the long edges that you have created, don’t forget to remove the pins as you progress. Don’t sew the short edges just yet; you’ll use those later to create the part that goes around your ears.

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

making homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

9. To create the part that goes around your ears, you must first take your hair tie and create a pocket. To do this, you have to set half of the hair tie down on the fabric and fold the short edge of your fabric over that half of your hair tie. Secure it with pins.  

making a pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

10. Sew on the inner edge of the hair band but be sure not to sew into the hair band, just along the edge.  

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

11. Repeat Steps 9 and 10 on the other side.  

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

12. Presto! Your mask is complete!  

homemade pandemic mask
Elyse Lewandowski

 

Note: for a man, we lengthened it to a 14×6 mask.  

A student at SLU that uses writing as a creative outlook. Currently majoring in Finance. From Minnesota.
Amasil is the President for SLU's Her Campus Chapter. She is a Biology major at Saint Louis University. Amasil enjoys writing poetry about the thoughts and concerns she has in her head, they are therapeutic in a way. Amasil loves goats, eating twice her weight in chocolate, and baking french macarons.