HOW TO MAKE A “10-MINUTE” FACE MASK IN FIVE HOURS

The lady on the YouTube tutorial said it would only take 10 minutes to make a face mask. Three simple layers: two tight-woven cotton and flannel for the middle layer. She made it look so easy. She lied. Let me tell you how to make a face mask. It’s the same “10 minute” one she made, but this one will take you 5 hours.

1. Cut out a 6″ x 9″ pattern from parchment paper. Worry about the fact that there isn’t much parchment paper left for the pizza you want to make next week and wonder if it’s one of those premium products no one can get a hold of.
2. Find cotton material. Rue the day you listened to Marie Kondo and got rid of most of your leftover fabric. (You should have listened to your Great Depression Era-raised parents instead and kept EVERYTHING “for a rainy day.” This is that rainy day.) All you have is a print of teapots (it was supposed to be an apron). Wonder if teapots will look stupid on your face. Decide it’ll have to do—you want to live and besides, who’s going to recognize you behind those teapots?
3. Your husband can’t be seen wearing teapots. You need a masculine material, but you’re out of manly-looking material. A shirt will have to do. Wonder why your husband too readily offers to sacrifice the French blue shirt you gave him for Christmas a few years ago that he never wore. Not. Even. Once. You go with an old shirt from a donations bag instead.
4. Now you need flannel. Rummage in the garage and find your old pajama pants that your husband has been using as a rag. (Ew!) But these are desperate times that require desperate measures. Wash in the washer on the hottest setting and dry. Pray he didn’t use it to mop up gasoline.
5. Set up your ancient sewing machine. The plug-in cord will be missing.
6. Look for the cord in the closet where you got the sewing machine. You won’t find it. That would be too easy.
7. Send hubby to look for the cord in the garage where you relocated the sewing machine that time your daughter and her family “temporarily” moved in with you. He won’t find it.
8. Send hubby upstairs to look in the junk room, as you remember you put the sewing machine up there when you renovated the kitchen. He won’t find it.
9. Tell hubby maybe it’s in the laundry room where it spent a few weeks between relocations. He won’t find it.
10. Send hubby to look in the random cord basket in the cupboard. He’ll find it.
11. You are now ready to cut your fabric. Conduct an extensive search for the 6″ x 9″ parchment paper, which by now has gone missing. You will eventually find it—right in front of you where it was all the time.
12. Pin and assemble the pieces together, including 7″ elastic which will prove to be elusive to pin, as all you could find was round elastic, not flat.
13. You are ready to sew—or not.
14. Run a 3-layer sample of scrap material through the machine to see if the tension and stitch-length are correct.
15. Wonder why the needle is hitting the cover plate and why the thread is breaking.
16. Conduct an extensive search for the sewing machine manual.
17. Try to decipher the instructions which were written by a Swedish manufacturer whose manual writers were not proficient in English.
18. Get out the magnifying glass to study the blurry black and white picture in the how-to illustration.
19. Re-thread the bobbin and the needle, praying you did it correctly this time.
20. Sew around the edge of the three layers of material.
21. Rip out the seam where you accidentally sewed over the hole you were supposed leave so you can turn it right side out.
22. Keep your eye on the clock. This was supposed to be a 10-minute job. You’ve been at it for hours and you’re due at Giant Eagle Curbside Pickup in a half hour. You need those masks!
23. Finish stitching and iron your masks.
24. Try on your mask, and try not to notice that the folds are uneven.
25. CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve managed to sew two 10-minute masks—and it only took you 5 hours!