Hi! Our county put a plea out to area sewists to make 6000 masks for our first responders, as they were able to source medical grade filters, but not masks, for their use.
They delivered kits with fabric, elastic, and nose wires, to keep the masks within a professional parameter.
So. . . those pleats. . . There are several fantastic hacks out there for creating the pleats very quickly as you are edge stitching the mask, using a seam ripper, or a fork, or some such handy repurposed tool. Completely skip the marking stage for speed-speed-speed!
But when I do that, the pleats are never uniform from side to side, slanting this way and that, and not being evenly spaced. For these masks professionalism is prioritized over super slick speed. Straight and uniform placement is wanted, but I don't want to sit there measuring and marking each of the 165 masks I've been making!
Enter this hack, which I saw shared on Facebook last week, but apparently failed to bookmark. And, of course, I can't find it now. So here's how it's done:
Cut a piece out of a manila folder (or similar paper source) that pretty much matches your mask size.
Mark the spacing of the pleats and fold them into the cardstock, THEN cut the form in half vertically so that you have two identically folded pieces. Mark the bottom.
Sandwich the mask between the two pieces.
Starting at the top, hold the sandwich pieces together and fold the pleat. Pin the sides.
Repeat for the center and bottom pleats. Pin each time, and just keep your hand on the center as you're working to stabilize the process until the pins are all in. (Here you can see that the bottom form failed to follow the final pleat in, but it still worked fine, so I didn't sweat it.)
Take the forms away, and:
Voilà! Ready for edge stitching, and it didn't take long at all to process a stack of 25.
(Those pins at the top show me where the nose piece ends, so I can go around it as I edge stitch instead of killing a needle.)
Notes: Flannel isn't ideal, as the moisture in your breath will pool faster in it and make the mask less effective, and pipecleaner fuzz is not happiness at the nose wire. Use twist ties, instead.
