How to make a face mask at home Easy

Face masks are part of our daily lives during the CoronaVirus pandemic. Many are made from plastics and designed to be used just once, which means thousands of tonnes of extra waste going to landfill.

Masks may help stop the spread of Covid-19.

How it should fit: For a face mask to be effective, it must fit over the bridge of your nose, past the edges of your mouth to under the chin, without restricting your normal head movements. You should be able to breathe comfortably while wearing it.

Fabrics: You will also want a mask made in a fabric that’s soft enough to sit on your skin without any discomfort. The more uncomfortable you are, the more likely it is you will touch your face or fiddle with it.

With all of that in mind, here are three ways to make your own face mask.

01. How to make a bandana-style face mask

This is the easiest and quickest way to make a face mask

You will need:

• A bandana or scarf
• 2 x elastic or rubber bands, or hair ties
• A coffee filter, paper towel, or kitchen roll (optional)

The easiest method for making your own face mask is as simple as folding a bandana or a scarf. Note that you need to choose the right bandana or scarf or you risk your mask won’t be effective, or not being able to breathe properly. Hold your material up to the light to see how much you can see through it. The less you can see, the better; if the material is too thin then your face mask won’t be as effective. Tightly woven, 100 percent cotton is best.

Fold your bandana in half, then folding it again twice — lengthways from both the top and the bottom. At this point, you can also add a square piece of a coffee filter, paper towel, or kitchen roll to your mask — which you can change regularly.

Then, place your rubber bands or hair ties around your strip of material, and fold the material in towards the middle, tucking the ends into each other if possible.

Surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adam, demonstrates how to do this in the video below. As you can see, this is a very quick and easy method of making your own face mask.

02.How To Design Your Face Mask

It will be so cool to have your own design or image or idea on your Face Mask. It will make your Face Mask look unique and eye-catching!

Here are two things to keep in mind as we dive in:

1. Design is a lot of strategies. Yes, you will have to create something visual at some point. But the lion’s share of the work is strategic, especially at the beginning. Be prepared to do more thinking and decision-making than drawing.
2. You’re not just designing a Face Mask. Remember that the Face Mask is only part of a larger visual system, and its individual pieces all need to work together.

To do this right, you’ll want to work in phases. While every designer’s process looks different, the one thing You need to use is These five phases:

• Discover
• Explore
• Design
• Refine
• Define.

03. How to make a cloth face mask with a sewing machine

You will need:

• Cotton fabric (10 x 6-inches or roughly 25 x 15 cm)
• 2 x 6-inch (15cm) pieces of elastic or rubber bands, hair ties, or strips of cloth
• Sewing machine (ideally)
• Needle and thread
• Scissors
• Pins
• Jewelry wire, or thin wire (optional)

To make a face mask with a sewing machine (although note that it is possible to create this face mask design by sewing by hand), first, cut your material to around 10 x 6-inches or roughly 25 x 15 cm.

If you want to make it really clear which part of your mask is the front and which is the back, use two different materials, this will help you avoid putting on the mask back to front (which is not recommended for hygiene purposes). Next, place your two pieces of fabric on top of each other. You want the pattern that you’d like to be on the ‘front’ of your mask face down. The piece of material facing up towards you will be the inside of your mask.

Next, fold over the long sides of the material around 1/4-inch or 0.5–1cm. Pin in place (don’t worry too much if you don’t have any pins, you can always use a needle or just keep checking that your fabric is held together) and hem. Hem just means folding the edges of your material over and stitching them so that your fabric will not fray and will stay together. You could also add some thin wire into the top hem of your face mask to help you shape it around your nose, and to stop your glasses fogging up, jewelry wire works well for this. To add wire, place it along the top length of the material, and then fold over and sew it down.

Once you have hemmed the length of your face mask, fold over the sides of your face mask around 1/2 an inch (1.5cm), pin, and hem the sides too.

Once you have created your side hem, you can thread your elastic or hair ties through it. You’ll need a needle to do this, or a pin, or safety pin, or basically anything that you can use to poke the elastic through your hem — a thin pencil might do the job.

With your ties threaded through the sides of your mask, tie your elastic or hair ties in secure knots, and move the knots until they can be tucked inside the hem. You can then adjust your face mask to fit your face, and add some stitches on either end of your face mask to keep your elastic in place.

If you are a seasoned sewer, you can sew the whole thing in one go, turning it as you go, or you can create a face mask with a pocket for a filter (see video below). You could even add your elastic in before you hem. The reason beginner sewers shouldn’t do this is that it’s very easy to catch the elastic in your hem and accidentally sew it down, and that will make it much harder to adjust later.

Conclusion

After all of that, you might be saying, “Wow, that’s a lot.” We know how you feel. We weren’t exaggerating when we mentioned how much work goes into Making And Designing a Face Mask. Designers typically take weeks to work through all the phases. So our last piece of advice is this: Don’t rush. Take the time to go through the exercises we outlined.