Can you feel that? A chill in the morning air, the crisp scent of leaves blowing in the wind, and whispers of “sweatah weathah” carrying on the wind: it’s officially fall, i.e. quilt season.
I love this cool time between scorching summer afternoons and frigid winter nights, but it always seems to go by so fast. Fortunately for me, fall in Utah is even more beautiful than it is brief. The mountains here are covered with maple trees, which are starting to glow fiery red, orange, and bright pink. There’s really nothing like it!
It’s time to lean in and enjoy fall, and what’s a better celebration of this short, sweet time than quilting everything? I decided to make a quilted face mask so that I can match my COVID couture to my quilted coat. Read on to learn how to make your own!
Check out all my prior quilted projects and roundups here:
- My Favorite Gee’s Bend Quilts
- Coo Coo for Quilted
- (Fall)ing in Love With Quilted Coats: a roundup of my current favorites
- How to Make a Quilted Coat
- To Cut or Not To Cut: Quilted Coats
- Face Mask Quilted Coat (not to be confused with today’s tutorial for a Quilted Face Mask! Ha!)
- Cut 8 inch squares out of your quit, your backing fabric, and your fusible interfacing.
- Iron your fusible interfacing to the back of your backing fabric.
- Cut the elastic into 2 10 inch strips.
- String two beads onto the middle of one of the elastic strips. Then pass one end of the elastic back through the second bead. This makes your mask adjustable. Repeat with the other piece of elastic.
- Pin the elastic to the right side of the backing fabric, making sure that the elastic isn’t twisted.
- With the front side of the quilt down, pin the quilt fabric to the backing fabric and elastic. Pin the whole fabric sandwich together.
- Starting on a side just above the bottom elastic, sew most of the way around the perimeter of the fabric and elastic sandwich. Leave a gap at the end.
- Turn the mask right side out through the gap you just left. Use a pencil or skewer to push out the corners and iron it flat.
- Sew the gap shut.
- If you like, you can topstitch the mask pieces together along the patchwork lines.
- Fold three pleats into each side of the mask and secure with a pin.
- Stitch back and forth along each pleated side.
- Voilà! You finished your mask. Make sure to wear it covering your nose and mouth!
Materials:
As you know, I’m a big fan of quilted everything. It was only a matter of time before I made a quilted face mask. As much as we all hoped that we wouldn’t even be considering COVID-19 anymore by now, the reality is that it’s still very much an issue. I know that lots of people are in a stage of the pandemic where we just don’t know what to do with ourselves anymore, but I have a proposition: When in doubt, CRAFT IT OUT! I’m facing my pandemic blues by making myself a stylish new quilted face mask.
My Quilted Journey
If you’ve been following me for a while, you may be familiar with my quilted coat saga. I’ve loved all things quilted for a long time, after all!
To make a long story short, I lusted after quilted coats for years and years. Then, last year, I finally bit the bullet and hired Romy-Krystal Cutler of Sew Like Romy to make me a quilted jacket. She did an incredible job and helped us put together a tutorial, so now you can make your own, too! (Check out Romy’s interview and follow her on Instagram @sewlike to keep up with all her fantastic makes. She truly astounds me at every turn!)
After Romy finished the coat, she left some of the quilt top unused. I knew I wanted to keep it to use later, so I tucked it away for while. I used a little bit of the leftover quilt for a sleep mask shortly after I had Felix, then I set it aside again.
Something I love about quilting culture is the way that quilters use all the little pieces of fabric, then keep reusing them again and again when they repurpose the quilt into clothing. In keeping with that tradition, I’m using the quilt top again to make a face mask!
I’ll never get tired of quilted!
“But Brittany, you already made that sleeping mask and you made a coat out of masks in April! Aren’t you tired of this yet?” Ohohoho, no. I’ll never get tired of quilted things! The irony isn’t lost on me that after making a quilted coat out of mask, now I’ve made a face mask out of the same quilt that I used for a coat. It’s something of a tongue twister, I know, and at this point Mother Goose could write a nursery rhyme about all my quilt, coat, and mask escapades. But we’re going with it.
Make Your Own DIY Quilted Face Mask
Materials
You’ll need about 8 square inches of quilt top or patchwork fabric, backing fabric, 20 inches of 1/4″ elastic, matching thread, fusible interfacing, 4 small beads, a sewing machine, an iron, and an ironing board.
Instructions
Prepare your materials
Mask Construction
Finishing up
More Mask Fashion
For more face mask inspiration, check out Our Favorite Face Masks for 2021, another face mask tutorial, and Halloween costumes incorporating face masks!