Oh how happy I am to craft! Continuing from the crafts projects with my Heal’s Fabric bundle, I decided to make an eye mask. I’ve become quite reliant on them recently and are SO handy for me when I’m in hospital as the lights never really get turned off.

The design of fabric that I chose was the Heal’s 1810 Killary Fabric In Cloud Study By Emily Patrick. This painterly cloudscape pattern is ideal for my eye mask and will help me drift off to a dreamy peaceful sleep.

Making an eye mask is surprisingly easy, I may not have the finesse to sew neatly just yet. However I do feel it’s best to just follow a few guide lines and practise a bit.

Items that you will need :

• Fabric (this will be the facing fabric so chose pattern or plain, I love my cloud fabric)
• Lining fabric, make sure you choose a soft fabric as this will be resting against your eyes. I chose I light soft cotton in a nice grey colour.
• Cardboard, this is used as a stencil for your eye mask shape.
• Pencil for drawing eye mask shape on your cardboard.
• Fabric scissors.
• Scissors or craft knife to cut cardboard
• Sewing machine
• Sewing thread
• Either velcro or elastic sewing thread
• Pins
• Fabric pen, if you wish to decorate
• Iron

Draw a basic eye mask shape on your card board. You can either measure your face, I drew a rough shape around my glasses with a 2cm gap (18cm in width). Then draw a boarder around that shape, this will be your seam allowance (ideally 1.5cm). Cut out the cardboard shape, I like to use my fancy brass HAY scissors.

Then with fabric scissors, cut both of the fabrics to the shape of the card cut-out.

I made two fabric straps with the grey lining fabric. I made mine roughly 30cm x 4cm, leaving 5 cm of the length for sewing the seams, once sewn on they should be about 25cm each. You can make them smaller if you need to.

Once you have sewn around the edge and left a gap. Pull the fabric strap, this will help turn the eye mask inside out, revealing the outside of the mask. Top tip : use a crochet hook or something similar to push out the edges. Iron this flat as it will help you on your next steps. Place and pin the second fabric strap in the open gap and sew this shut.

Sew a clean edge around the eye mask.

Now for a bit of fun! With your fabric pen (I have Marabu 070 3 mm Textil Painter Plus, White), draw some sleepy eyes onto the fabric. Once this dries, iron it to fix the pattern. This can be washed at 40 degrees and shouldn’t fade.

Now you have both soft fabric straps attached, you will need something to secure them together. I chose velcro, which was a little harder to work with than I anticipated, reason being the glue on the velcro strips gunked up my sewing needles!

So there we have it, my sleepy eye mask. 🙂

I thought I’d try another eye mask with an elastic strap, using a technique called ‘shirring’. I followed this tutorial on pretty-ditty.blogspot.co.uk , basically all you do is replace your bobbin thread with elastic thread. Measure the back of your head from ear to ear for a basic strap size.

Tip is to reverse stitch the edges to stop the elastic thread from pulling out. I think it makes quite a nice strap for the eye mask so I might make another cloud sleepy eye mask using this technique.  The patterned fabric used in the second eyemask is Heal’s 1810 Killary Fabric In Trees by Cressida Bell 

I hope you have fun making your masks! If you get stuck, feel free to ask any questions, I’d be happy to help. Send me some links with your creations, I’d love to see them.

Happy crafting!

H x