Ally Face Mask

Protohaven’s Ally Face Mask is an open-source, quickly-produced, well-fitting face covering. It’s faster to make than other fitted designs, and is more comfortable than flat or pleated designs.

It’s designed to be mass produced by anyone with a home sewing machine and basic sewing ability. No pleats, no curves, no fancy stitches. It requires only readily-available materials, the kind used for pillowcases and t-shirts. No bias tape to make or elastic to source. 10 an hour, 50 a day, 200 a week are reasonable outputs for a dedicated intermediate sewist. You could supply your whole neighborhood.

It’s also comfortable to wear. It doesn’t smash your nose or pull your ears, and it stays put when you talk.

You can start making the Ally Face Mask by ordering our pre-cut production kit, signing up for a production support class, or following the free instructions below.

Tools

  • Consumer sewing machine
  • Thread scissors
  • Point turner
  • Safety pin (1)
  • Straight pins (3)
  • Seam ripper

Materials

  • 100% cotton jersey knit fabric (one 28” x 1.5” strip per mask. Will be approx. 56″ after stretching)
  • 100% cotton woven fabric (two approximately 5.5″ x 10.5″ pieces per mask, cut to shape)
  • 100% cotton thread (preferably color-matched)

Patterns (Woven fabric)

Patterns are each sized to print on a single 8.5″ x 14″ paper (US Legal). Make sure the printer settings are set to “actual size”. Alternatively, they can be printed in two parts at 100% scale if using 8.5″ x 11″ paper (US Letter).

Small/Medium (fits most)

Ally Small/Medium 1.1 PDFDownload

Large (optimized for larger faces)

Ally Large 1.1 PDFDownload

Youth (ages 3-10)

Ally Youth 1.1 PDFDownload

Beard (facial hair friendly)

Ally Beard 1.2 PDFDownload

Assembly Instructions

Here are the materials needed for a single mask. We’re aiming to sew in a batch of 10, so gather your materials and let’s get started!
Align and pin each pair of fabric with the “right sides” touching in the center of the sandwich
Begin sewing a few inches away from the top-right corner using a ¼” seam allowance.
Complete a W-shaped seam, making sure to leave an opening along the top edge. Repeat for the whole batch.
Invert the mask through the opening (like you would a pillow case) to reveal the “right-side” and repeat for all 10 masks.
Use a chopstick to poke out the corners so they are nice and sharp. You guessed it, repeat for the whole batch.
Here is a mask after it has been inverted.
Use your fingers to pull the mask taught at the opening. This will naturally fold the raw edges inside.

Sew along the top to seal the opening and repeat for all 10 masks.
Here is a mask with the seam along the top.
Fold the corner over twice.
Stitch the fold along its edge to hold it in place. Repeat for the last corner and then the whole batch.
Here is a mask with stitched corners
Fold each mask in half, aligning the mouth and chin, then pin in place.
Sew a maximum 1/8″ seam along the edge to join the mouth and chin.
Here is a mask ready for its drawstring!
Give the drawstring a quick stretch to naturally shape it into a tube.
Attach a safety pin to one end of a drawstring. Repeat for the batch, then feed them through both loops of each mask and knot the ends.
There you have it!

License

Creative Commons License
Protohaven’s Ally Face Mask by Alexis Caldero is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://anest.ufl.edu/clinical-divisions/mask-alternative/#prototype2.

Legal

This design and these instructions are provided for free and as-is. Neither Protohaven nor the creators of the design and instructions offer any warranty or assume any liability for their use.