I am Type 4, and true to my nature, I have three specific considerations that must be followed every night or I won't sleep: no light, no noise, and. . .I know this is really weird, but. . .I have to have my ears covered. If they are cold, it drives me crazy. If you think this is really inexplicably strange, you and my husband should start a club. . .
I bought the eye mask below when I lived in South Korea, and I love it. If you notice, it is extra long. This eye mask actually wraps around your ears and keeps them warm all night! This tells me something very affirming: I'm not the only weirdo out there!
(Sorry for the sideways) I love that the nose cushion blocks out all the light that creeps in at the bottom corners of my nose without squashing my nose. The fabric itself is also very very dark and I can hardly tell if there are lights on or off around me when I have it on. I have even tested it against full sunlight! All I need is earplugs and I'm set for 8 hours of blissful sleep.
Anyways, it is getting old and I haven't been able to find its equal, so I decided to make my own version of it, and I also decided to give you a full step-by-step tutorial on how to make one for yourself if you want. The pattern is at the very end of this post.
First of all, you will need to find some fabric that blocks out a fair amount of light. You don't have to use the same stuff, but I will tell you what I used because I know some people like to do things totally by the book. The red material below is actually black-out curtain material. The middle piece is some black fleece I used for padding. The bottom piece and the nose piece at the top are both made of black silky satin material. Satin feels nice against your face in the winter and summer, so I suggest getting something silky for the facial part.
After it's all cut out, sew the outer curve of the nose cushion.
Cut slits around the curve of the seam (or trim the excess seam off).
Turn it inside out and sew from the outer corners to the middle leaving a hole.
Put just enough stuffing into the hole so that it is smooshy but not stiff. If you don't stuff enough, it won't block the light. If you stuff it too much, it will press against your nose all night and hurt in the morning. You can actually test it against your nose at this point if you want. You don't need to buy a whole bag of stuffing just for this. I actually just used some stuffing from a box that a necklace came in. You could also use stuffing from a recently opened pill bottle.
Now you are going to sew the three layers of the mask together, but first, pin it like this. The outer corners first:
The middle corners second:
(Sideways again. Stupid Blogspot!) Then, pin the other areas, unpin the nose bridge pin, and pin the nose cushion in place:
Then, sew around the perimeter. Ease the fabric around the curves. It's okay if it doesn't look perfect around the outside as long as the needle is catching all three layers of fabric. Also, take it easy around the nose cushion. Push the stuffing down so you can really get into the hem well.
Okay, if you don't really care about aesthetics, you could just sew your elastic and velcro on here and be done, but. . .let's just say we want it to look nice. How we gonna do that?
Bias tape is your best bet. If you don't know what it looks like, it looks like this. Stores usually sell it near the thread.
Pin the bias tape around the outside hem. Bias tape is cut on the diagonal (called the "bias") which allows it to stretch a little. Go ahead and use that stretch to pull the tape around the curves. You can see below that the mask looks a little bunched up. That's because the bias is relaxing a bit after being pinned, but once it's sewn it won't look bunchy. (If you don't pull the tape around the curves as you pin, once you start sewing, it will start gapping and frustrate the crap out of you.)
Then, sew it up. Make sure to fold the last little edge of tape under so you don't have a frayed edge.
The original mask had seams running through the "ear" parts, so I decided to replicate that, but you don't have to do this step if you don't want. This step really should have been done before sewing the tape on, but oh well. To get a nice straight line, pin the top of the seam and the bottom of the seam and connect the dots with your thread. (If that's too hard for you, put in a few more pins to create your line and remove them as you sew.)
Here is another picture of what I'm talking about.
Now cut two pieces of wide elastic. They only have to be like five or six inches each. You also need two 2 inch pieces of velcro. Sew the softer side of velcro like this: Fold the edge of the elastic in and set the velcro on top of that fold. Either pin it in place or ease it through your machine with your fingers. Sew all the way around the velcro with the velcro on top.
Sewing the sticky part of velcro can be tricky because it likes to stick to the thread as you sew. Here's how I do it. I fold the second piece of elastic in and put the velcro on the fold. Then, I flip it all over and sew with the velcro on the bottom. It's a little hard to do when you can't see the velcro, but trust your fingers and go as slowly as you need to maintain control. Obviously, my other hand was holding the camera in this picture!
Then, take the elastic with the sticky velcro and sew it like this: Fold the other edge of the elastic over and put the fold on an outer corner of the mask. Make sure the velcro is face down. Then sew a rectangle. You don't have to sew a rectangle; you can just sew a line, but a rectangle keeps it in place better.
Here is a close up of the rectangle from the other side.
Then sew the other piece with the softer velcro exactly the same way on the other side
--EXCEPT--make sure that the velcro is face up! Otherwise the two pieces won't meet!
The End!
And here is your pattern! All hem allowances are included and are 3/8". The dotted line on the nose cushion denotes the only hem that is turned inside out. Also, the eye mask needs to be cut on a fold. . .obviously. I drew this on a piece of 8 1/2" by 11" paper, so if you need to know for printing reasons, the top edgeof this picture is 8 1/2".
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