Friendship Bracelet Face Mask – Covid-19 has a new Bane

Let me show you how I started it. I took a piece of paper and I had this ruler, so what I did was I drew out the parallel lines. It turned out that this ruler is one inch width-wise, so I used it to get the parallel lines. I knew I was gonna have the diamond in the middle, so I could get it to be more shaped like the n95 type mask as opposed to the flat ones.

I used the flat disposable masks and figured out that it basically would be like six inches from top to bottom. So with those things in mind, I laid out these lines. It ended up like this was because I knew I was going to cut out the segments of paper and I needed something to hold it together when I taped it. I could have just gone with the diamond and taped it but it turns out that that worked out really good. So it was a half-inch either direction off-center so it’s basically an inch and then I kinda ball-parked the angle that the diamond would make.

This was about as far as I could go before tapering in at the orange area. When you change it up like this it’s very different than anything that you’re used to, so I had to kind of improvise how I clipped it to the board to let it come together. The distance between the rows is different so you have to kind of compensate for that by getting that first knot in there really snug and then bring the next one in and try to keep it consistent, which is of course a challenge. That’s why I say that this is an incredibly difficult build and isn’t something that you would recommend to any beginner. Honestly, if you’re a beginner, follow my beginner videos, learn, practice, and you’ll get there.

Something I did for you guys though, is each one of these segments was based on a bracelet that was 24 strands. That is almost exactly one inch wide. Now, mind you this isn’t DMC. If I’d used DMC it would be a little bit smaller so you’ll have to figure out the number of strands. I did it this way so that you could kind of take one of the photos and break it down, figure out exactly where I made all of the different segments, and you could figure out just how many knots are in between each one of these and be able to fashion it for yourself. After I got this joined and kind of got it down a little ways, I didn’t stay with the original pattern. A lot of this build honestly was having a rough idea in mind of exactly what I wanted but not a clear idea of how I was going to get there. It was about trying to see how far did I have to go to get certain elements before figuring out what was needed next.

When you’re doing this starting in the middle you just have string all over the place, so how do you get it to stop? You can get your first diamond made and join the diamonds. Once I found where the center is, I then offset myself a little bit and then made these slip knots.

Since there wasn’t room to make sure the inner strands wouldn’t get pulled out, I tied each strand to the one next to it to keep that from happening.

So here you can see the majority of the mask was finished. This is just before I tied the brown strands together.

After tying each of the knots to cinch up the brown strings I had to find a way to keep the remains from showing. So I wrapped a strand around the previous strands like I would when ending a bracelet and then tied the group in a knot. It’s not a problem as it’s not near my nose or mouth when I’m wearing it.

I used a kumihumo disk to make the straps. It was a matter of luck that the top strap fit me exactly so I just tied it in a knot. That strap alone will hold the mask quite well.

For the other straps I made the kumi longer and added a bit of the floss I cut off to do a bit of macrame to make it adjustable.

Here you can see the knot that keeps the brown strands hidden as well as how I knotted the red and orange strands together.

So that’s it basically. I had to use my best judgment to figure where the straps would come from and there wasn’t a reason other that what just felt right. If you have any questions, please just leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer all of them.