Hello lovelies,

my new sewing vlog is finally on youtube, and only 3 days late. 

 But editing always eats so much time and I had to redo a few parts. I am not happy with the light and the glitches in the back but that's just the camera. Next time will be better, I hope!

 All the best,

Auris Lothol

 The rectangular mask

I got the pattern from a face mask I bought in Japan. It is small and designed for petite women, therefore it is much too small for my boyfriend. But as it's only a rectangular, you can always change the length of the pattern and the elastics.

Disclaimer: These cloth masks are not designed to protect you from COVID 19. They may protect others though!

You need:

• scissors
• elastics
• paper
• pins
• sewing machine 
• ruler 
• iron
• fabric

My mask is 17x16cm, I drew it on a piece of paper and cut it. It is much easier to use and does not require drawing freehand on your fabric every time.
It also has all the information I needed directly written on it:

• placement of folds
• placement of elastics 
• the opening

The  seam allowance is already included, I used 1cm.


Start with pinning the paper pattern onto the fabric. And then cut around it, as the seam allowance is included, no other lines are needed.


Cut your elastics. For this project I used thin elastics because I had run out of the thick white one. My elastics was 21cm long. For small heads I recommend 20cm and bigger ones 22cm.


Pin the elastics on the right (outer) side and with the needle on the left side.

Close it with the other fabric and pin around the edges. Leave a gap open of about 4cm at the bottom,  so you can turn the piece inside out afterwards.

 Sew around the edges with your sewing machine. And like with the half round mask, go over the elastics a couple of times to secure them.

Before turning it inside out, cut away the edges.


Turn your mask inside out in this step.  Be careful to lightly pull the elastics afterwards to get out the corners nicely.

Your piece should look similar to this. Turn on your iron and iron it flat.


The next step would be marking then folding the plaits. At the top and bottom I left about 2cm free and then marked every 1cm with a water erasable pen.

As seen in the first picture, pleat the folds and pin them on the sides.



To be sure that the plaits look even on both sides and then iron it. 


The last step is fixing the plaits by going over it with the sewing machine. Go over all the sides and you are done.





All the best,

Auris Lothol

Hello lovelies,

for once, I jumped on the bandwagon and decided to also sew face masks. In Austria you are now obligated to wear face masks in shops and the public transport. Apart from that, you are not allowed to meet with people who do not share a flat with you or get closer than 1 meter to other people. Some deem those measurements rough but I do understand the need for it. And the last three weeks showed, that the curve had really flattened and the rate of infection had decreased.

Disclaimer: These cloth masks are not designed to protect you from COVID 19. They may protect others though!

There are two different designs of these masks:
1) the rectangular with three folds
2) the half-round

I prefer the half round ones because they are super quick and easy to sew. It takes me about 20 minutes for one mask. Maybe I am just doing the rectangular masks in a complicated way as they take almost 30 minutes to make, including folding and ironing a few times. The tutorial for the rectangular masks is now online.

You need these items:

• Elastic
• cotton fabric
• sewing machine
• scissors
• pins

The half round mask

Hello lovelies,

I always had a dust mite allergy and every morning I would wake up and sneeze. It gradually grew worse and then suddenly, a few years ago I also had to sneeze when I was out of the house. It turned out I also developed an allergy to grass, pollen and birch. Fantastic.
My use of tissues got out of hand and usually I go through a pack in a few days. Sustainable? Not really. But what to do? I need tissues.
I remembered that my grandparents used fabric tissues and actually before the paper tissue industry everybody used fabric tissues. If I could just make myself a few or buy some, I could stop buying paper tissues and maybe help the environment a bit. And because I would need a fancy tissue, why not also add some lace? Usually that is only optional but this is the best way to look fancy and let's be honest, sneezing into a lace tissue while wearing your fancy lolita outfit just looks better than the plain old paper tissue.

I have a wonderful lace crocheting book from Japan and followed the instructions with a few alterations.

It also didn't really take me long, I sat in a Cafe around the corner and crocheted away with good cake and coffee.

After I finished the lace I pinned it to a cork board.

I then realized that this tissue will be a very tiny one as I measured out the sides (which were about 14cm). I cut out some linen from my leftover stash and inserted it. Or rather pinned the lace over it.


In the last step I hand sewed the lace onto the tissue with a whip stitch so that it will also keep the fabric from fraying on the backside.

And that was it. It didn't even take me a full day to do this and I am very proud of my tiny tissue, even though M. made fun of it's size.



All the best,

Auris Lothol