DIY Face Mask: How to Sew a Face Mask at Home

Many brands and tailors all over the world have put a halt on their regular production and stepped up to help with the coronavirus crisis and the tragic shortage of equipment we are currently facing.
PPE is vital to people working on the front lines and we are facing a dramatic challenge as doctors and nurses are risking their lives to care for the sick without adequate protection.
If you are a sewer, you can apply to be a volunteer and make masks and gowns for medical staff through various organizations. You can check out this thread on the forum for more information. 
Research suggests face masks may be effective in containing the spread of the virus, but please refrain from buying them if you’re not working on the front lines or are not sick as per the CDC guidelines
[Update: as of Friday April 3, the CDC has officially recommended wearing cloth masks in public. This recommendation does not replace social distancing.]
Instead, you can take on a project and try your hand at a DIY face mask following a tutorial published by I Sarti Italiani, a sartoria in Sicily that was one of the first to convert their production to PPE for doctors, policemen, and people unable to work from home but providing essential services. 

Here’s what you need to make a DIY face mask:
– Fabric (ideally cotton or wool, no jersey)
– Lining (cupro bemberg, rayon, silk, but if you don’t have any of these you can just use your fabric of choice)
– TNT (non-woven) fabric (alternatively, you can use baking paper)
– Elastic band or ribbon

Download the PDF Face Mask Pattern created by I Sarti Italiani and print it 100% scale. 

Video copyright: I Sarti Italiani


Let us know if you found the tutorial helpful, and please stay safe.

 

How to Spend Hours at Home Without Going Crazy

The entire state of California was the first to have been told to stay at home, by order of the governor. In an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, the nation’s most populous state — almost 40 million residents — must now practice shelter-at-home protocol (click here to see what that entails).

“Home isolation is not my preferred choice,” Gavin Newsom admitted, “but it’s a necessary one.”

Since then, other states have followed suit, with more to come. Have you always wanted to work from home and management said no? Well hallelujah brother, because by government decree, you’re following orders, and your commute time shrinks to zero, as does your use of body wash.  Are you searching for the right way to reply to that email, or looking at coronavirus memes?  Who knows?  At last you can microwave fish leftovers in your dirty pajamas without your pesky co-workers complaining, the sensitive freaks.

Work at home life
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The Negroni Tweed Jacket by 100 Hands

My first experience with the negroni was on my honeymoon, long ago in 1999, in Riomaggiore, the southernmost town of the Cinque Terre in the Italian Riviera.  The town is squashed in a precipitous, narrow valley that pours into the sea, like a confetti-colored shovel diving into the blue, and the main street is right in the middle, cutting the town in half, terracing downward.  On this street, in a random bar, we asked the man behind the counter for an Italian cocktail.  The man replied there was only one, and poured us each a negroni.  It was the first of several that night, and countless since then. To this day it remains my favorite drink. 

For years only a handful of bartenders knew what a negroni was, which stupefied me at first, and I was forced to order a Godfather, which like the movie was about as close to the Italian experience as you could get in America at the time.  With the launch of Negroni Week in 2013 by none other than the Campari company itself, however, the ruddy libation was suddenly thrust into the zeitgeist, to the point that nowadays it seems like everyone has one in hand, which is perfectly fine by me.

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Black Tie at the SF Ballet Gala

Watching ballet is like watching embodied calligraphy set to music.  Nowhere else can you see the most precise movements so elegantly executed, with technical feats appearing as effortless as water swirling in a vacuum.  The opening gala for the San Francisco ballet is a special occasion celebrating all of the choreography, set design, and more that goes into each production, a taste of the many talented artists in the city’s gorgeous opera house.  But in addition, it provides an opportunity for those who support it to dust off their finery, and they did not disappoint. 

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