Cotton fabric help

[Reastie]

I’m going to make some fabric face masks at the week end (I think we will all be wearing them when reintegrating back to some sense of normality in the coming months).

Advice says to use tightly woven cotton eg shirt fabric or bedding. I have dressmaking 100% cotton (eg some old kath Kidston cotton dressmaking fabric). Will that be as tightly woven as shirt or bedding fabric?

Apparently the tighter woven the more effective and overall that’s the most recommended fabric for home masks. I don’t want to make mine less effective if I use the wrong fabric and I don’t know enough about them to know if mine will be good enough.

I read somewhere that you should hold it up to the light and see how much light comes through - the less the better. I also read that you could put in a pocket for a filter (a coffee filter was recommended/suggested!)

I suspect there is no definitive answer as t shirts and bedding come in different weights anyway.

Standard quilting or craft cotton will be fine. The CDC website has cloth mask making advice and gives methods for making a mask out of a bandana or T-shirt too.

I've bought some 100% cotton quilting weight cotton which is tightly woven but breathable.

I've got a load of remnant liberty cotton lawn I was planning to use, with a high thread count plain cotton lining backing. All just leftovers from other projects and fat quarter bundles.

Fantastic thanks. I have some lovely liberty dressmaking fabric but I don’t think it’s cotton, does anyone know if that’ll work? All I can find is use cotton but not sure why not other fabrics

It's because cotton is breathable, washable at higher temps and non-sweat inducing (for lack of a better term 😁)

Ahh ok, that makes sense!

I have quite a lot of curtain lining material, I wonder if that’ll work

If its liberty dressmaking fabric then it most likely is cotton lawn like mine. It's very silky because it's a very high thread count but it's still cotton.

Room that’s great then! It is definitely from liberty and liberty print as I bought it there at their London shop! It’s just it feels so different and silky I assumed it must be something else. This would be perfect then :)