How to make a 3-ply cloth mask

An easy and efficient method

This and all images by the author.

After I made the mask that formed the subject of my previous article about mask making, I realized that I was out of bandannas. So I took myself to the now opened for business JoAnn Fabrics store closest to me and bought some cotton fabric. What I really wanted was something with a coronavirus themed design, or, failing that, (or in addition to that if they had that) little tombstones, grim reapers, or something equally in keeping with the times.

Finding none of those I settled for what you see in this article. Close enough. One thing I found out — be prepared to roll your eyes, you people who are experienced at sewing — this material turned out to be so much easier to deal with the bandannas I’d been working with! At first I thought I’d messed up by only buying a yard of each of the cotton fabrics I picked out. That would have been the case if I had intended to used roughly the same method as I had with the bandanna, but I realized that if I switched things up a bit I could get up to five 3-ply masks out of each yard. 3-ply is what I do. I’ve read that multi-ply cloth masks are more effective, and 3 is easy enough to work with.

I began by cutting a 7 1/2" x 27" strip,