The Tech Grandma: DIY kids animal face masks

Every year for Christmas my Mom comes to visit and together we make something for the kids in our family - both Burke's and mine. This year was no different, although there was a lot different about this year - but we still wanted to do something for the kids. I traveled down and picked Mom who lives in Dayton and we got busy.

I started thinking about Christmas masks - maybe a Santa face or reindeer, but settled on fun animal masks that the kids could continue to wear after Christmas.

Walking around outside as winter is nearing in Michigan, I noticed how nice my mask actually helped to keep my face warm, so I prototyped a couple different mask fabric and settled on a fleece front with a cotton back. Nice winter - heading to the car from the house type of mask, not good for all day use.

I looked at what some other's were doing with regards to mask construction and really settled on a 3D Mask because it gave me a flat service to put the embroidered animal face on it.

I'm not going to focus on the pattern and construction, you can find all that here with Red Poppy - How to sew a 3D mask. She did an amazing job and the instructions and pattern were easy to follow.

This post will focus on the embroidery. I've included the embroidery files here for you to download - free of choice. I have a Brother embroidery machine - so the file format is .pes.

The masks consist of a 5x7 rectangle that fit my stabilizer, cotton cut with the pattern, 12" pieces of elastic, couple of adjustable beads, cotton lining for the carbon and a nose piece.

I got the hoop and file loaded ready to go. The first stitching outline has occurred.

Now time to add the tongue. I cut the tongue out of pink felt in this shape and folded it with an overlap. Hopefully you see it - it's pretty much a pleat.

I pinned it here but that was only for the demonstration.

You could pin it to the outline stitch, but I just used a little dab of tape to hold it in place.

While the second outline is stitched.

Because I put the tape back further, you can't see it.

I took out the hoop and cut it down to the stitching line.

And then ran the finishing satin stitches.

This one is the cute little doggy face.

I positioned the pattern over the doggy face and cut. I found it helpful to fold the pattern in half so I could better position it over the embroidery.