Face mask with slits

This mask has a slit on top for a piece of wire that can be folded to conform to the nose. It also has a pocket on the reverse side to insert a filter. This is a simplified version based on the one in this video.
This face mask is not as safe as an approved medical mask, but not everybody can get the more effective ones.

Cut a piece of tightly woven fabric, 7"x17". Cut a piece of bias binding 2"x7" and two pieces of binding 2"x36". The strips can be cut straight (as opposed to bias cut) if necessary.

Finish the short edges with a zig-zag stitch or a serger.

Fold the fabric in half and then fold center up to 3/8 inch below raw edges, and press. Bottom fold will be the top of the mask.

Press sides to center of short strip, then fold in half and press.

Line up folds and pin.

Top stitch the edge of the binding closest to the short edge of the fabric. Leave the other end loose for now. Fold the fabric in half with the right side facing in.

Sew 1 1/2 inches in from either end, 3/8 inch in from raw edge.

Turn inside out, open out seams, fold back open edges, and press.

Fold top and binding along fold lines and press.

Fold in half and place pins half an inch away from center on either side.

Pins should be one inch apart.

Top stitch along the edge up to the first pin. Backstitch and skip to the next pin, backstitch and topstitch to the end. There will be a gap in which a wire will be inserted to conform to the nose.

Turn the fabric over. With the bottom edge on the top, pinch up a 3/4 inch pleat slightly below the slit.

Fold upwards and pin in place.

Make similar pleats above and below, and pin.

Sew 1/4 inch along raw edges.

Fold short edge of long strip in 3/8 inch and press.

Fold long edges towards center and press.

Fold in half and press again. Turn over and press, using steam or spray bottle. This will help keep the strip in place for the next step.

Fold strip in half and align mask with center.

Open the binding and tuck the mask up to the fold.

Pin in place. Top stitch the entire strip from start to end. Turn the mask over and make sure the strip was stitched down on the back. If not, stitch the back part of the strip.

Cloth Face Mask

These directions are for a simple cloth face mask lined with flannel. The cloth face mask is not as safe as an approved medical mask, but not everybody can get the more effective ones.

Start with one piece of tightly woven fabric and one piece of flannel, 7x9 inches.

Also cut two strips of bias binding, 2 inches wide, 36 in. long. (The strips can be straight cut if necessary.)

Sew the fabric and flannel together, right sides facing, along top and bottom only (short side). Turn inside out and press.

Pinch up a 3/4 inch pleat slightly below the center line.

Fold it up and pin both sides.

Make a similar pleat above, and pin.

Do the same thing below.

Sew 1/4 inch along the raw edges. Set aside.

Turn in both ends of one 2"x36" strip about 3/8" and press.

Fold sides to center and press.

Fold in half and press. Turn over and press using steam or spray bottle. This helps keep it folded while sewing it down.

Find the center of the strip and align it with the mask.

Tuck the mask into the strip and pin it in place.

Top stitch the entire strip closed, starting at one end.

Stitch along the entire strip.

Important! Turn the mask over and make sure the other end of the strip was sewn. If not, topstitch the back part of the strip. I have to do this about half the time.

Repeat on the other side; trim threads.

2018 is about to end

Well this blog has fallen by the wayside, but here's one post for 2018. I ramped up quilting the last couple of months, but the project/photo/blog link has languished this year. I've been so busy. But I have been making quilts. I see that my last post was early last year, so almost two years ago. I talked about ending my leadership of the charity quilt project at church. That has turned out so well. The woman leading the project now is great, the project is going along just fine and best of all I'm still participating and totally enjoying it now. Life is even more well organized, aside from blogging.

So in 2018, I made this for my friend Peter Golden:

It's called Navaho block.

Then after the election, which occupied me for most of 2018 (I ran a ballot drive for Dan Fishman, Libertarian for State Auditor, and worked on the campaign), I made the following quilt in a frenzy (and wrecked my back):

It's a Boston Common design using Kaffe Fassett prints. My back got better.

After that there was a quiltathon, the event that the charity project puts on three times a year. I was so inspired, I made two quilt tops and rehabbed two more, joined them and quilted them on the longarm. Two have binding finished and one has binding attached. Then I cut up a two-year-old little mountain of scrap fabric and made five more tops, also quilted on the longarm. Hopefully I can post some pictures of the whole bunch. But here's a detail of one of the tops. I've quilted the inside and cropped out the non-quilted border. I had exactly 36 squares of pseudo-solid fabric squares left over from another projects, and these are them:

So bye 2018.

Labels

No pictures today, just a narrative.

Today I am putting labels on a bunch of quilts. I haven't been too bad about doing this overall, but not great. I'm thinking about half of them have labels. There was probably a time when I knew the year in which I finished the quilts that I had made, but that time is past, so I'm going to have to dredge through blog posts and file folders to figure it out.

Being organized

I should probably post an update on being organized. I was going to make this blog an ongoing narrative of how I organize my time and space, but let's just call that a little fail. On the other hand my time and space are becoming more organized, I'm just not blogging about it.

Time

I have been limiting, planning, and making better use of my crafting time. If I spend entire days doing crafting then other parts of my life suffer. So balance is the key, and planning is the key to balance.

There isn't much magic to it, just occasional restraint, being aware of when my crafting time is so I can focus on it, and prioritizing what I want to do with that time. Some days I make a written plan. Deciding to let go of my "leadership" roles in charity quilts has helped in this respect. I'm not quite sure how much credit I can give myself for making that decision, because it wasn't working out at all anymore.

Space

Getting rid of the charity quilts has made a huge difference. Soon the materials for the Power of the Quilt Project will be stored at the UUAC church in Sherborn, which is where the project is carried out. All of the materials for the Rhododendron Quilt Guild are out of the house. This was a concerted effort of mine during the first two months of the year, and I'm really happy to say that chapter of my life is behind me. It was not something that I was capable of doing. The only thing I can give myself credit for is not second guessing my aversion to doing that job. Guild people were donating materials that were very difficult to sort and use, but the new coordinator doesn't seem to have a problem with that. I've given her three quilts, a giant roll of batting and a bin of kids' fabric that PQP doesn't need.

Other improvements I've made in my space are removing all yarn from the sewing room. Finishing quilts helps too. Unfortunately I'm now starting to accumulate finished quilts. I need to start getting rid of finished quilts somehow.

2016 UFO Challenge

If you look back at my very few posts for the year 2016, you can read that I started a project of finishing one UFO a month. This lasted about two months. The March project really threw me off because it was so hard, and then I got very busy at the end of May. I eventually did finish all 12 projects in 2016, but many were finished in December.

January

These pinwheels were made from a bunch of different sized triangles that I had in a box. It wasn't easy to put this together. I quilted it by hand. Not a blanket - a wall hanging.

February

This little quilt is also a wall hanging. A few years ago, I went through a box of 3 inch strips and squares and made them all into quilts, and this is how I used up the solid 3 inch squares.

March

Another wall hanging. I finished it at 10:22 on December 31st. It was the hardest one to finish. I started this 25 years ago, and I'm not sure I would have made anything like it now that I have more experience. Too many seams coming together at a point meant that I could not quilt this on a machine. So I took it with me on a family visit and just put my nose to the grindstone. I finished it on Friday December 30th in the hotel in Albuquerque, and when I got home on Saturday evening, I put the binding on so I could say I finished everything in 2016.

April

Here's another one I finished out of sequence late in the year. I quilted the inside straight lines "in the ditch" meaning along the seams. I quilted the outside separately and then spliced it together. That was hard enough, but free motion quilting with black thread on black fabric was like quilting with my eyes shut. But it's great and I love it so much, my favorite. Also made from leftover 3 inch squares like February's quilt.

May

This one was actually finished on time, because I learned how to use a longarm (industrial) quilting machine this year. I love it too. It's about big enough for a twin bed. It's also made from scrap bits in a box.

June

 

The plan was to tie these two, but since I learned how to use the longarm, I took them to the longarm place and quilted them on the big machine. Like many of the quilts this year, I had picked out backings for them, so I was a little bit ahead of the game. They're charity sized but I'm a little bit too attached to them to give them away just yet. Kids, nieces and nephews are growing up so maybe there will be babies in the family in the years to come. Made from a bunch of squares I had in a box.

July

I was running a petition drive in July so this one had to wait. Quilted on the longarm. I think I started it about 25 years ago. It was block of the month at the Herring Run Quilters Guild.

August

For this month the assignment was to make a new quilt from start to finish. But I changed my mind and substituted this one. Also quilted in the ditch along all seams. I think it's only fair, because to make a new quilt from start to finish isn't really finishing a UFO. And it's beautiful, based on a picture of art glass.

 September

This one was quilted out of sequence too because it was just so hard to finish. I am totally overwhelmed that I actually finished it. I got the fabric in 1991 when Peter and I went to Hawaii. I had the idea to make the quilt this way - log cabin squares with same fabrics for the logs. I had it all cut out for years, and for some reason I was going to foundation piece it and not add batting, making it a sort of sheet. But because I learned how to use a longarm machine, I changed my mind and set up a time to use the automatic machine so that I could have a nice allover pattern. I gave it to Carter who loves it.

October

These are two 1-patch wall hangings that I made after I took a Sylvia Einstein workshop about ten years ago. I made bunches of these and actually finished quite a few, but these were still in the UFO box. Finished now. They need sleeves though if I'm going to ever hang them on the wall.

November

 

These are little doll quilts that I made from scraps of another quilt. They were sitting around with pins in them for a few years, and I substituted them for another quilt that I had intended to make from start to finish.

December

Finally my December project. This is technically still a UFO. My assignment was to finish the top, for which I had to buy new fabric and dig up a bunch of old fabric from my stockpile. The original top was taken apart and most of it was sent to Bastrop, TX (the story is here). All I had was the center five columns of squares, so I added two more columns to each side. It was one of the first things I ever made, also over 25 years old, and I could see I have improved a lot since I started making these things.

New Focus

I haven't posted on this blog for the summer and fall because I ran a large ballot drive this summer, and then in the fall I organized the state libertarian convention. So thinking about starting it up again, I decided to change the focus somewhat. Instead of being a diary about what I'm doing, I'm going to explain how I organize myself. Maybe that will help someone deal with the chaos of being an innately disorganized quilter. I consider myself organizationally challenged but able to cope so that I get things done. People think I'm organized, but it's a struggle.

Pictured here is a child-sized quilt that I named "Country House 1-Patch" because of the block center right that has the image of a little country house. In the winter of 2015, almost two years ago now, I started to empty my boxes of scraps. I ended up making lots of quilt tops including the one you see above. So this year I'm trying to finish one or two quilts for each month. I have a backlog, but I still want to finish them, so I've made myself a schedule and some deadlines. This one-patch and another are finished, but they needed labels. They have labels now and they're in storage for when I have grandchildren. Or for when one of my sisters had grandchildren. Someone better get some grandchildren, that's all I have to say.

My list from last night looked something like this:

Sew labels on new quilts

Finish second set of Hawaiian quilt blocks

Sandwich two skewed 1-patches

Iron and prepare granny squares quilt

Put away and count PQP quilts

Start a spreadsheet

I started the spreadsheet and finished the second set of Hawaiian quilt blocks, because that was the most important deadline. I have to quilt the thing at the longarm rental in less than three weeks, and the blocks take a long time to assemble. I sandwiched one of the skewed 1-patches. I had some distractions, so that was all, but it was a substantial amount of work.

I realized that I have not integrated into my consciousness the amount of work required to reach my quilt finishing goals. That's why I have written down the deadlines.

This morning I made four labels and have attached three. I put away and counted the PQP quilts. But I'm still behind my goals for yesterday.

So I'm going to revise yesterday's list.

Finish the labels.

Quilt the skewed 1-patch that I pinned

Sandwich the other skewed 1-patch

Look at the granny square quilt and break down the work so that I know what I'm dealing with.

Hi, I'm adding this edit - if anyone reads this, and I'm sure nobody does, and even if you do, you wouldn't read this far. But I'm sorry I didn't blog my progress. If you read the next post, you will see, I stuck to my deadlines and finished all of the quilts I wanted to finish in 2016. So the deadlines were very helpful. But I had very little time to do anything else.