Julius has been using the expression “super good” and “extra super good” and “really extra super good” to describe the levels of goodness of things he is interacting with. He started using it a couple weeks ago. I was quite pleased when after I cut his hair he ran upstairs to look in the mirror and proclaimed “I look super good!”
So you may have noticed that in our birth pictures of Patricia, Will and I were wearing color coordinated masks. I blame my co-worker for that idea. Since I discovered I was pregnant a couple days before going into quarantine, none of my co-workers even knew I was pregnant unless I mentioned it. With this pregnancy I was already showing by 8 weeks, and by 20 weeks I felt like I already looked nine months pregnant, so it was weird to me that my some people had no idea I was pregnant. It was getting embarrassing when I’d drop a comment about being pregnant and I’d get the response “you’re pregnant?!” from people I swore I had told… So I just sent out a mass email to people that I was pregnant and my due date.
One of my co-workers was disappointed that I hadn’t announced it with another funny shirt and said that a quarantine solution for informing people I was pregnant this would have been to change my Skype photo and see who noticed. But my photo is again just a headshot… which is when my friend Roger suggested that I could have made a custom mask with a stork on it… I thought this sounded like a cute idea, if not for a quarantine pregnancy announcement. So… before we went to the hospital I decided to make new masks. In addition to being pink in honor of the little lady to be, they also had a stork on them. Since we’d be wearing them in the hospital for several days on end I made them more airtight than the previous batch. This included adding the n95-style around the head elastics and nose wires.
Form Fitting Fabric Masks for Extended Wear
- Nose wires (I used 2 of these stacked per mask)
- 1 sq foot of cotton fabric for interior
- 1 sq foot of cotton fabric for exterior
- 1 sq foot of oly fun
- 1 yard of 1/4″ elastic
- Iron on vinyl (optional)
- Cricut pattern for stork
- Measure yourself for a mask as described in this blog post and follow steps 1-6.
- If desired, create an iron on vinyl patch for your mask using the Cricut pattern above and iron it onto your front cotton fabric.
- Cut out 2 AxB size rectangles of Oly Fun, and pleat the Oly Fun together with the interior fabric in step 6, but do not iron! Just press material with your hands to form the pleats.
- Pin together the fabric layers, with interior fabric and exterior fabric right sides facing. The stack will look like exterior fabric, interior fabric, 2 layers of Oly Fun.
- Measure from an inch in front of each ear, across the top of your head. This will be the top elastic length. Cut elastic.
- Measure from and inch in front of the ear, around the back of your neck. This will be the bottom elastic length. Cut elastic.
- If desired, cut ear elastics as described in step 10 in this post.
- Insert one end of top elastic into side of mask at the top between interior fabric and exterior fabric. Feed it through and insert other end into other side of mask at the top. Pin both ends.
- Repeat step 8 for bottom elastic on the bottom of mask sides.
- If desired, insert an ear elastic between interior fabric and exterior fabric on one side, pinning on top of the top and bottom elastic locations.
- If desired, repeat step 10 for other ear elastic.
- Stitch top and sides of mask, and bottom of mask 1″ from each corner, leaving the rest of the bottom opened.
- Turn right side out.
- Insert a nose wire between the exterior fabric and layer of Oly Fun in the direct center of your mask at the top most edge.
- Using a zipper foot, stitch very close to the nose wire, sealing it in.
- Turn the unfinished edge of the bottom under, and stitch the entire bottom edge, close to the fold.
- Put on the mask and adjust the nose wires as you would an N95. If desired, you can also wear it like you would a surgical mask, but the seal will not be as tight.
Worn as an N95 with over head elastics
Here we are at the hospital, wearing our masks for the first time.
Worn as a surgical mask with ear elastic
