Sewing on a Sunday

Today I felt like making something.

Sewing something.

Why not an owl eye mask?

I work in a 24 hour laboratory which means I'm on a weekly shift rotation.

Day shift, afternoon shift and graveyard shift.

It can at times be really hard to sleep in daylight so I am quite dependent on my eye mask.

But it's boring and black.

If you too need darkness to sleep,

today I'm going to show you how to make yourself a nice new one.

Firstly you will need all these things...

• a few sheets of felt
• basic sewing kit
• coloured string
• approx 40 cm elastic
• some buttons

(A sewing machine is also handy but if you don't have one you can always just stitch by hand)

Roughly draw the shape of your mask onto a sheet of felt and cut it out.

Trace that piece onto another sheet of felt except this time add a sort of unicorn horn to the top.

Cut out big circles for eyes and choose your buttons.

The button choosing part of this was an especially time consuming one.

I loved them all.

But in the end settled for two big purple ones and two green heart ones.

Gather your bits.

Next step is to join the front and back of your mask.

Once you have done that, it's time to fold down the unicorn horn to give the owl a nose.

For the next step I decided to hand stitch instead of using the machine.

This is partly due to my terrible sewing skills but mostly due to the fact that sometimes

 hand stiched things look way cuter.

It's that little bit of love.

I chose to use green string and an over sized needle.

Once you have finished all the stitching you can attach the buttons.

Because I chose to use 4 buttons instead of two I decided to sew each pair together first.

Then I could hand sew them on a little easier.

All that is left to do now is attach the elastic to the back.

Obviously it depends on the size of your head.

I cut off approx 40cm

but ended up having to shorten it to about 36cm to make it nice and snug.

I made the decision to hand sew the elastic onto the back because I thought it

 would be neater than using my machine.

I still managed to make it look messy but taking in to consideration that my eyes would be shut

while wearing it I figured it didn't really matter.

In retrospect I also realise that sewing the eyes on before joining the front and back of the mask would have made it much neater on the back also.

Oh well.

This revelation simply means that not only did I make something new today I also learnt something new.

Plus it means the raccoon one I'm going to make for my lady will be even better.

Though mine is still fucking awesome.

Sweet dreams.