Make your own face covering! Easy step-by-step guide
We've seen lots of colourful and comfy looking home made face coverings out and about so we teamed up with our friend Julia from Upcycle Fashion to put together a guide that shows how to turn a fabric that you love, or one that needs a new life, into a protective face mask for you or your children to wear.
What you'll need:
- some soft fabric (around 30cm square)
- an old pair of tights
- a plate
- an iron
- some sharp scissors
- sewing machine or needle and thread
- a little helper*
*optional!
#Masks4All
How to make a face covering tutorial
1. Choose your fabric
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2. Lay fabric flat and use a dinner plate to draw a circle
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3. Draw around the plate and cut out the circle
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4. Fold in half and press with a hot iron
... ... 5. Fold in half again and press with a hot iron
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6. Use sharp scissors to cut along the folds, into quarters
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7. Match up 2 quarters and layer up, right side of fabric to right side
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8. Stitch along the curved edges
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9. Press open and fold out
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10. Cut the tights into 2cm strips and pull so that the strips 'curl'
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11. Open out the fabric
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12. Match both pieces placing right side to right side
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13. Start stitching both fabric pieces together 2cm before one of the centre seams, keeping right side to right side
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14. When you get to the 1st corner, place most of a tights loop inside the 2 pieces of fabric (like a sandwich filling!) leaving a little bit of loop poking out
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15. Keep sewing across the centre seam and repeat the corner process for the 2nd corner
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16. When you have stitched the 2nd loop into the 2nd corner, stitch for another 2cm then stop. Leave a gap between your starting and finishing sewing points.
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17. Sew all around the mask, but leave a gap so that you can turn the mask the right way around
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18. That gap is needed so that the mask can be folded the right way around.
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19. Press the seams flat with a hot iron. Be careful not to iron the tights, they don't like the heat!
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20. Top stitch over the gap to close
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21. You're all set. Wear with pride!
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Let us know how you get on @littlegreenradicals - we'd love to see what prints and fabrics you've gone for.
The face covering shown in this tutorial is a non-medical mask.
