I recently posted about sewing masks, and as I explained in the blog post, I’ve been giving these to friends and family right now. One point I forgot to mention is that I have discovered these are not one-size-fits-all.

Just about every tutorial I’ve found requires fabric pieces that are 9″ by 6″ or 9″ by 12″ and folding the fabric in half, with a quarter inch seam allowance. This is supposed to fit an average adult. However, not everyone is average, and I’ve had a number of people, mostly men, who have found this size too snug. So, I up-sized my fabric by 1 inch all around. I use two pieces that are 10″ by 7″, and for the 3/8″ wide elastic, I use 8 inches for each piece instead of the suggested 7″. For average sized masks, I use 6 1/2″ lengths of 1/4″ elastic.

Now, elastic is kind of tricky because some will be stretchier than others. When you size down from 3/8″ to 1/4″, especially, you will notice the thinner elastic is stretchier than the thicker. Thus, I have kept to 7″ on the thinner elastic, even if I’m making larger masks.

I continue to modify my technique as I make more of these, and I urge anyone who decides to give this a go on a big scale to make a few and have people test drive them for you before you decide to start cranking them out in bulk.