How to Sew a Simple Homemade Face Mask (a very detailed tutorial!)

With federal recommendations going into effect a couple of days ago to wear face masks when people are in public due to the coronavirus, I made some face masks for my family. And then some other people started asking me to make them. I made several, but I'm getting burnt out, so I wanted to make this tutorial to show exactly how I made mine. And anyone with basic sewing machine experience can make one--it's very simple!

This is made of regular fabric and is three layers thick. There is a pipe cleaner across the bridge of the nose so that you can push it down snug to your face. It's held on to your face with hair ties that loop around your ears. And it covers a good amount of your face--very important!

I wrote all the details on the (trillion) photos below, but there is one thing I'd like to note beforehand about hair ties. I started out using the thick elastic hair ties that I like to use for my hair, but after wearing a mask for a couple of hours today (I had a big grocery shopping trip) I found that it was bothering my ears.

I bought some of the thinner hair ties and used those today--I think they are more comfortable, especially after I added the pipe cleaner across the bridge of the nose. However, Jerry likes the thicker banded elastic. It's all personal preference!

These fit my family well, but obviously everybody is different, so it may need some adjustments depending on your own face. If the thick hair ties are uncomfortable, then try the thin ones. The thin ones may make the mask feel too loose, which also isn't a good fit.

But anyway, here is how I made them!

I downloaded a pattern (and I originally made some as-is from the pattern, but I found it too time consuming and had a lot of unnecessary steps. I also didn't like that there wasn't a spot to put something across the nose to hold it in place. (They recommended using double stick tape to hold it down)

So, the only part of the pattern that I used was one of the "face" pieces. If you download the pattern, the only piece you'll need to cut out is "Face 1" or Face 2" (it doesn't matter which, if you follow the instructions I have here).

Here is a link to the pattern pieces. Just print out the piece that says "Face 1" (or "Face 2"--same thing). Cut out that pattern piece, and then use it as I show below. Good luck! (I hope this is detailed enough... I used way too many photos!

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How to Build a Squirrel Picnic Table (a tutorial)

I've gotten a lot of compliments on the squirrel picnic table I made for my squirrels, so I wanted to write the specifics here in case someone else wanted to replicate it.

*Note: I've been seeing pictures that people have posted of their tables after using my tutorial, and it makes me sad that they don't give me credit for it! It would be nice to share a link--I worked hard on this, and I'd appreciate it if others knew about my tutorial. Thank you!*

As I said before, this table was NOT my idea... it came from a photo of a table that went viral. A man made a squirrel picnic table and shared the photo on Facebook, and then several people sent the picture to me and said I should make one. Of course I agreed! (Here is a link to the original: Squirrel Picnic Table by Rick Kalinowski)

(Here is the post about how it went over with my squirrels when I was done building it)

So, here I am posting a (not great) tutorial for how to build it (assuming you're familiar with simple woodworking). Because I made this up as I went along, I don't have pictures of everything. But this will give you a good idea of how I made it.

I didn't have many scraps of wood left to work with, and I ended up using a slightly warped board that was 1 inch by 12 inches by 6 feet. I used my table saw to cut it down to the size pieces I wanted and I used the router to smooth out the edges of each piece. But this is a project that is a great way to use up scraps of any size!

I was going for a "rustic" look--I wanted it to look a little more detailed/realistic than the original viral photo (mainly because I love woodworking and I wanted to spend some time using my new tools making it my "own" rather than a copy of the original).

Even though I spent a ton of time disassembling and reassembling pieces of it as I went along, I finally got it done and it's actually very simple to make! I added an umbrella, but I'm not going to include that here because I don't think my squirrels were happy with it, hahaha.

Here, I'll just show how I made the table, and then you can choose how to hang it. (I added a block of wood on one end of the table and screwed the block into a post on my deck.)

First, here are the final cuts I made out of the warped board. These are actual dimensions and not the "common" dimensions of most strips of wood. (Aside from the wood, I used exterior screws that were 1-1/4 inches long)

Seat tops (4): 2" x 3/4" x 8"
Table top (3): 2" x 3/4" x 8"
Legs (4): I will detail this below, because I cut them on an angle; but the boards were 1.5" x 3/4" x 5" (They were 6" before I angled them on the miter saw)
Supports for table top (2): 3/4" x 3/4" x 5"
Supports for seats (2) 1.5" x 3/4" x 12"

(In the photo below, the dimensions are slightly different than they ended up being... I modified the dimensions a little as I worked, but this shows the pieces I cut):

First, I cut out all the boards on the table saw. I thought about putting them together as-is, but when I think of picnic tables, I picture the edges of the boards being slightly rounded (a little more rustic). So, used the router with a rounding bit to trim the edges along the length of the boards.

For the legs, I had no idea what angle to cut them. I eyeballed it, and then noticed that it was close to a number that, on my miter saw, is highlighted at 22.5°. I have no idea why that is an important number as far as mitering goes, but I decided to give that number a try. And it worked great!

So, after routing the leg pieces (they were about 6" in length), I cut each side to a 22.5° angle with the miter saw (making each one a parallelogram). After angling, they were 5" from the top edge straight down to the bottom edge.


To assemble:

(There has to be a better way to assemble than what I did, because it was hard to drill in such a tiny area. I had to use a drill bit that allowed me to drill at a right angle. But here is what I did...)

Lay the three table top pieces next to each other, and then lay the two tabletop support pieces on top of those (perpendicular to the tabletop pieces).

I put the table top support pieces 2" in from the edge of the boards and screwed them down to the bottom of the table top. (Yes, they're messy looking, but they were just scraps and hidden from the outside of the table).

Then I placed the legs on the outer side of the support boards (1/4 inch apart in center) and screwed them into place from behind.

You can see from the side--this is how I laid it out to see what I wanted it to look like from the side. (Obviously that's a bigger gap than 1/4-inch between the top of the legs, but this was just a rough idea as I worked--after assembling, there is 1/4-inch there. The dimensions below are what they ended up being when I was done).

If you look at the side of the "A" frame when everything is together, the measurement from the bottom of the middle tabletop board to the top of the seat support is 2-5/8". (Updated: There was a typo here, I've corrected it)

After screwing the legs into place, I added the seat support boards--those are just screwed into the legs from behind.

Finally, I placed the seat boards on top of the seat supports and screwed them down into the supports from the top.

As I clearly demonstrated, this is NOT an easy thing to explain, but I think the pictures help. The dimensions aren't super important, and you can just play around with them to get it to look how you want. Basically, I just played around with it until I liked the way it looked.

This is the final result... (like I said, I added an umbrella, but if making it again, I wouldn't do that).

Make sure you check out the post about how my squirrels liked it... I'm so glad I spent so much time working on it for them! *eyeroll* Hahaha

I've put this whole post into a PDF, in case you want to print it for reference. Sorry that it's not a "plans" format, but I'm better at tutorials than I am at writing up plans! Here is the PDF tutorial.

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A Baby Yoda for Jerry

This weather has been gorgeous in Michigan the last couple of days! It's so weird--usually we get a big snowstorm in late March or early April after thinking that the last snowstorm in March would be the end of it. I'm really starting to believe that this may be it--the real start of spring :)

When I woke up, I wanted to finish a project I was working on as a gift for Jerry. As you know, he's a total Star Wars nerd, and he has been obsessed with Baby Yoda ever since November when the Star Wars TV show came out.

When I became interested in crocheting and knitting again, I started on an afghan; then I realized that I really need to do projects that have instant gratification in order to stay interested. I enjoy them more!

So I decided that making little plush toys (amigurumi) would be a good thing to work on. On Amazon, I bought a variety bag of tiny balls of yarn in several different colors (Amazon affiliate link). Then I saw a pattern for a Baby Yoda on Ravelry and I just knew I had to make it for Jerry.

The pattern was in Spanish, and I'd never had to deal with that situation before! There were several other patterns, but I needed one that was very small (due to amount of yarn) and that was free (I didn't want to buy a pattern when there were several free ones).

Despite the fact that I am FLYING through the Spanish lessons in Duolingo (thank you all for the suggestion!), I was super confused when try to decipher the pattern. I managed to read it well enough to make the Baby Yoda, but I had to totally wing it when it came to the coat.

This morning, I finished it up and gave it to Jerry. I like how it turned out! It was my first time using "safety eyes" (they are used in amigurumi) and it was fun.

While I was working on that, my sister sent me a text asking if I could make some face masks for her and Shawn, and possibly a friend of hers (plus her friend's family). And a couple of other people asked for masks, too. Since I was going to make some for my sister, I thought I might as well make as many as I can in case other people need them.

As of today, there is a federal recommendation that everybody wear masks when going in public to grocery stores and whatnot.

I don't have a ton of fabric, and there was no way I was going to be able to make enough masks with pockets for filters (it took a very long time to make them for my family); but since most people don't have the materials for filters anyways, I just decided to do an extra layer of fabric--and for one layer, I used the fabric from a pillowcase. I read that pillowcases are better at keeping out contaminants than regular old cotton fabric.

I noticed that it's definitely harder to breathe through a pillow case than through other fabric (the ones that I cut up weren't used--they came with a fitted sheet for a futon, and we only used the sheet). I know the masks aren't perfect, but they are better than nothing!

I have only been to the grocery store once in the past couple of weeks. It's so weird! I'm always saying that we need to stop grocery store trips, because there is no reason to go--we have plenty of food at home. Now we're actually abiding by that.

Jerry wore his mask to the store today, along with a hat and sunglasses, and got some odd looks ;) But I actually saw a lot of people wearing masks when I went to the store.

Those are actually my sunglasses! Maybe that's why he got the looks. ;)

Anyways, today Eli got a baseball net/cage thing delivered from Amazon. Since he hasn't been able to play baseball, he's going stir-crazy. I love that he plays baseball instead of video games, so I wanted to encourage that--and we bought a huge net thing where he can hit balls off of a tee without them going halfway across the neighborhood.

Jerry went to the store to get some groceries for my parents, and while he was gone, Eli and I set up his net. It was the WORST designed thing I'd ever seen! Setting it up was super frustrating and took about five times longer than I thought it would. In the end, I don't know if we're even going to keep it. It was expensive, especially considering that it's not the greatest quality (something we discovered today during the set-up).

Tonight, Jerry and I had another game night with with our friends via Zoom. It was fun! And thanks to Zoom, I've now seen my old high school friends more in the last two weeks than I have in a year! We played Wits & Wagers again; I think next week, we'll play Scattergories. If any of you have ideas of games that would work well to be played online, please share! I know there are online versions of games (like Cards Against Humanity) but I like the actual physical games.

Oh! I was THRILLED to notice that Nip/Tuck (from the FX channel way back about 15 years ago) is now on Hulu. I loved that show, and I've been looking for it to stream ever since. So, if any of you were fans, just letting you know that you can watch it again on Hulu.

If you haven't heard of it, it's a great show to binge watch during this lockdown. It was considered very "edgy" back then, and it's a mature show (just FYI). I remember that Nip/Tuck and The Shield were very popular and actually they opened the door to a whole new sort of genre of shows.

Funnily enough, I remember giving birth to Noah during an episode of The Shield, hahaha. I watched it every Tuesday night at 10:00. Noah was born at 10:46 pm on a Tuesday. (No, I wasn't actually watching it while I was pushing!) The Shield also had the most memorable finale of any show I've ever watched.

This post really doesn't have a point. It was just a busy day! Tomorrow, I want to finish up the masks I started making and hopefully get them mailed out. Jerry's off this weekend, so if we have another nice day, I'd like to go for a walk at the part or something.

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The Positive Side of "Lockdown"

I'm going to try to keep this short (I say 'try' because I always say that and then my posts are insanely long). Today was the most GORGEOUS day--it got up to 75 degrees and it was sunny.

You know what was SO odd to see, though? People outside. I'm not saying that's bad--I think it's great!--but I've never seen so many people out walking dogs, riding bikes, going for walks, playing ball, etc. Usually, my neighborhood is dead.

Eli had to make a quick video of him catching and then throwing a baseball. It was really cool what his baseball team did in a group chat! Since they can't play ball now, someone suggested a game of "virtual" catch... One boy started it with a video of him throwing the ball (he throws it but you don't see where it goes). He names someone from his team in the video (like, "Hey, Eli, catch!" before throwing).

Then the next video is of that person (we'll say Eli). His video is of him just catching a ball (so it looks like he's catching it from the previous kid) and then throwing it (as if he's throwing it to the next person). Eventually, with all of the videos together, it'll look like they're playing catch. Awesome, right?! When the video is put together, I'll ask the parents if I can share it here.

This whole lockdown has had such an impact on every single part of our lives. Some of it is negative, of course, especially if you or someone you know has contracted coronavirus. However, I've seen so much positive come out of it, too. Like the people who were outside taking advantage of the nicest weather we've had so far this year.

(My kids' schools announced that they won't be going back for this school year... I expected that, but it's still crazy! This whole thing hasn't really hit me yet.)

Every day, my kids have had me drive them to the park to play baseball (they can't walk or ride bikes with all of their equipment). I got a brand new car a few days before all of this craziness started, and I've barely driven it. I have to say that I love not having to drive all the time! I haven't been able to hang out with my family, but I've been video chatting here and there and that's something I never would have done before.

I got a FaceTime call from Luke and Riley a couple of days ago, and it melted my heart. They are so adorable, and getting so big! Luke is potty trained, and Riley basically started potty training herself. They've been playing outside every day.

I did see my brother, Brian a few days ago. He asked me if I wanted some wood that they had leftover from building the house, and I was thrilled! It was odd when he came over because we had to stay a good distance away from each other, but we at least had a conversation.

He told me that he stopped at my parents' house first, and my dad saw all the cedar boards in Brian's truck and told Brian he wanted them for his fence. And Brian gave them to him! I couldn't believe it. I had been so excited to get the boards. The next day, however, my dad said that I could have them because they weren't the right size for his fence. So, my dad brought them over and I talked to him briefly too, from a distance.

I've loved having the time for hobbies. I've been knitting, crocheting, woodworking, sewing... I never used to have much time for it because I was always driving the kids around or working on more important things. A couple of the things I've made are gifts, so I can't share them until I give them to the recipients. But I love how they turned out!

I also made some masks (I think I already posted this?). We can use them for going to the grocery store or other "necessary" places.

(See? This post is long already!)

I'll end with this photo of my squirrel picnic table being used today! Hahaha, not exactly how it was intended, but I believe Rumples is pregnant--she's huge. So, if you can't fit on the bench seat, might as well sit on the table. (She sat there and ate every walnut, and I even brought her another handful, which she ate as well.)

The bench seat reminds me of when I was pregnant with Eli. I went to Olga's with my mom and we were taken to sit in a booth. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't fit! I sat down and my stomach hit the table to the point where I couldn't sit there. (Being 270 pounds at the time didn't help, either, I'm sure.)

This coronavirus has done a number on eating habits, too--good and bad--but I'll save that for another post!

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If you build it, they will come...

(UPDATE: I've made a tutorial for this picnic table, which can be found here: Squirrel Picnic Table Tutorial)

Firstly, I cannot take credit for this little squirrel picnic table idea. Several people sent me photos of one that someone made and said I really need to make it (being a crazy squirrel lady and all).

Here is a link to the original: Squirrel Picnic Table by Rick Kalinowski

I saw the photos and immediately thought, squirrels + woodwork = my perfect hobby project!

I wanted my picnic table to look a little more "authentic" (and I also had pretty much ZERO scraps of wood to work with) so I spent way too much time working on this little thing. My sister suggested adding an umbrella to keep the birds away from the squirrels, and I loved that idea. (I took a trillion photos of the process, so I will try to make a tutorial if anyone is interested.)

I had a warped board that I had bought with the intention to use for shelving (not seeing how warped it was) until I realized that it just wouldn't look right. It's been sitting in my garage for a while. Thanks to my handy dandy table saw, I was able to cut it down to make all the pieces I needed for this cute little squirrel picnic table!

This was a make-it-up-as-you-go-along project, so I spent as much time building it as I did taking it apart and redoing several pieces. I probably spent about 12 hours on this goddamn thing! But I loved every moment of it :)

And I just KNEW my squirrels would love it.

Well, joke's on me! Once I finished it and I hung it up (yes, my deck is TOTALLY in need of repair/cleaning/staining/anything at all), I set some walnuts on it and made the clicking noise I do with my tongue to call the squirrels. Sometimes several of them come, sometimes none at all.

But today, just one of them came. I call her Rumples, because the fur on her head is always kind of rumpled, like she just got out of bed.

So, I spent HOURS working on this picnic table for the squirrels, and here is how I imagine the commentary went when Rumples showed up.

And then less than five minutes later...

The squirrels crack me up. Most of them are totally comfortable taking food from my hand, but this picnic table just screams trouble, apparently ;)

I'm going to keep trying, though! I just want one adorable photo...

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