New Grandma Wants to Sew!: Quick face masks - Billette's Baubles review.

Because I suddenly had a more urgent need to make a number of masks quickly, I knew my favourite mask pattern from Fleece Fun was not going to cut it. It's the best pattern for fit and comfort, we have found, but quick to make, it is not.

I found this You Tube video from Billette's Baubles, which was not one I'd tried before. It looked easy and comfortable, and quick to make. So off I went, and the masks were very well received. So I expect to make more.

To read my full review, including how I slightly modified it to improve it for us, and how I speeded up the process of making quite a few, read on.

I made the fronts and backs of the masks of identifiably different fabrics. In the You Tube video Billette says the masks are reversible, but it's thought better to be able to distinguish which is front and back. So my backs were all pretty plain, like this green floral cut from fat quarters. They chose what they wanted for the fronts. Here are some of the options. These were nearly all scraps I had in my stash which were big enough to make a front, i.e. at least 7" x 9" (or c 18cm x 23cm).

To make the masks you need two pieces of cotton fabric or similar, which are for the front and back, 7" x 9", and one piece of flannel 4.5" x 7" (or 11.5cm x 18cm). I had some left-over white flannel which was perfect. For any others I make, the flannel is going to be bits from the stash, which are mostly in baby prints. For copying her design exactly she also says 2 pieces of elastic 7" or 18cm. I diverged from this as you'll see later. She doesn't use a nose wire, I did, and the nose wire needs to be 4"-5" (10-12.5cm) once the wire ends are turned in so as to not be sharp.

I needed to go a bit into bulk production mode. Here are some of the pieces of flannel pinned onto to the backing fabrics.

To save time, I 'chain' stitched them, by which I mean I sewed continuously from one mask to the next without taking them off machine or cutting threads in between. Here they are coming off the machine in a long string, which I then snipped apart..

Here's the flannel now attached on both sides. The ends don't need to be sewn as they will be sewn later.

You then sew the backing and front fabrics together right sides together, all the way round bar a small gap for turning. Billette incorporates the elastics at the corners while doing that. I did for some, but not others - more about that in a minute. Next you turn it out and press.

One extra thing I did was to add in a nose wire. This I poked in through the unsewn gap right up against the top seam. (At this point there isn't a top and bottom, so either of the seams with the flannel along it will do.) Then I stitched a little channel to stop it moving, including stitching along the ends so the wire couldn't slide around.

Now more about the elastics. I didn't use Billette's approach for any of these masks. She uses just two bits of elastic per mask, of 7", stitched into the corners of the sides without the flannel, so they form ear loops. She does this when attaching the front and back right sides together, so she has to peel back the corners in turn. (The elastics are then inside the mask, but appear on the outside as you turn it out.) The elastics go parallel to the long sides of the flannel. I think using two 7" elastic ear loops is too limiting, even though many mask designs use it. 7" is too short for some, too long for others. And some people don't like the discomfort of ear loops and so need an additional button tab to hold the loops off their ears. So the first one I made had 4 separate elastic strings, sewn into each corner while the back and front were right sides together, in the same way as the loops. This also has the advantage that with separate strings you can choose - fasten round the ears, or round the head. Using this method, you have to make sure that (a) you catch the end of the elastics firmly in the corner and (b) you don't catch any of the rest of the elastic in any of your seams!

Then I got short of elastic supplies, and for the next few, I made an extra channel sewn each side on to house the elastic, so just one piece could be threaded through down one side, across the back of the neck, and up the other, so it ties round the back of the head - longer than two single ear loops, but not as long as four separate pieces. Here's one mask pinned, ready to have the extra channels (in green) sewn to the ends.

Just a word about pleating. I measured to get the pleats right size, eyeballing the size of each pleat till the whole measured just over 3". Billette also pleats by hand, but only does 2 pleats. I did three on each mask. Since then, I found a pattern to make a template for folding mask pleats, which I had to print a bit smaller (85%-90%), but it's helpful.

Here are the first three finished masks. You can see on the top one there are 4 separate strings; on the middle one, there is just one longer string threaded through the side channels. The bottom one will be the same as the middle but hasn't yet got its elastic through.

For the next group, even shorter of time, I reverted to the method of the first bmask, sewing 4 elastics, one to each corner. These can be tied round the ears or the back of the head. I do actually prefer the alternative method with the extra channels, but it's a bit more time-consuming. The middle one below was made narrower as it was for a child.