The Sleep Mask Challenge
With one simple change I have transformed from someone who would spend hours laying awake at night, to falling asleep within twenty minutes of my head hitting the pillow. And none of it would have happened if Hubby hadn’t challenged me to make a sleep mask.
The sleep mask backstory:
I am someone who is greatly bothered by light pollution as I’m falling asleep. Anything from the glow of a streetlight visible around the edges of the curtains to the small green light indicating the rechargeable batteries are full is enough to keep me awake for hours. I used to have a sleep mask that I would wear occasionally, but its whereabouts are currently unknown.
In the meantime, I’ve just been trying to block any source of light I can see before climbing into bed. There were various articles of clothing or scraps of paper over every electronic device. Anything that emitted a light I could see from where I was sleeping got covered. I even safety pinned the curtains in our bedroom shut so there wouldn’t be a gap in the middle. I have a problem, I know.
So why didn’t I just get a new sleep mask? The thought simply never occurred to me. I knew I had one, so why would I spend more money on another one? The logic may be flawed, but it’s the logic I used.
This is how we lived, until…
One night, near bedtime, Hubby announced that he wasn’t tired. He wanted to stay up late working on a project on his laptop. That was perfectly fine with me. But I started making requests for him to change locations and block light sources so I could fall asleep. Hubby countered by challenging me to make my own sleep mask before bedtime, which was about an hour away.
I paused for a moment, thinking if that would be a doable thing to make within the timeframe. It didn’t matter either way because I can’t resist a challenge, so I said challenge accepted. But where to start? My first thought was how fast can I knit? That may have been because I was watching a knitting video on youtube when said challenge was issued, but we have no proof. Hubby laughed when I told him. He asked me why I don’t just use your sewing machine since it’s all set up anyways. Good point.
I quickly went to my sewing area.
I began rifling through my fabric stash (which consisted mostly of old or damaged clothes we couldn’t sell but didn’t want to just throw away). My previous sleep mask had one silky side and one fuzzy side, so that’s what I was emulating. I picked out a pair of silky sweatpants and fuzzy exercise shorts, both black to block the most light. These were my fabrics.
Next, I grabbed some paper and sketched a quick pattern. It took me two attempts to get the pattern right. A good way to check if your pattern will work is by holding the paper up to your face to make sure it fits around your nose. Bonus points if you make someone laugh by making a funny face while doing this.
Cutting the fabrics was a mostly straight forward experience. I felt very fortunate to have flat head pins at this moment. They laid nice and flush to the fabric while holding the pattern in place. With my fabric cut, I aligned the two pieces right sides together and secured them with pins. I then threaded my machine and it was…
Time to sew my sleep mask.
It didn’t take me too long to sew around the edges, leaving around a centimeter of seam allowance all the way around. I left a gap unsewn along one edge so I could turn the sleep mask right-side-out. Once it was right-side-out, I did a quick test fit by holding it in place over my eyes. I couldn’t see a thing. Success!
Next, it was time to top stitch the whole thing. This was probably the most challenging part of the sleep mask because it was difficult to keep the stitches evenly spaced around the edge. After that was complete, I wove in all of the ends of my threads to prevent them from unraveling.
The forgotten step.
It was time to attach a strap to secure the sleep mask to my head. I’ll admit, I wish I would have thought of this part sooner; I forgot I needed a way to hold the sleep mask to my face. I should have sewn in the ends of the strap while I was sewing around the edges of the mask. But since I didn’t think of it sooner, my remaining options were to unpick some of the stitches around the seams and slide the ends of my strap in, or to sew them overtop of everything I’d already done. I chose the latter to save on time.
For the strap I picked out some scrap elastic I had salvaged out of an old piece of clothing a few weeks back. It was soft enough that I wouldn’t need to encase it in fabric yet long enough that it wrapped around my entire head, and I have a pretty big head. It was also a nice shade that brought some color to my sleep mask.
Straps, plural.
One thing I thought of before attaching the elastic, is that it would be nice to cut it in half and have two straps that wrap around the back of my head. One strap would angle down below my ears, wrapping just above the base of my neck. The other would angle up above my ears, wrapping around the middle of my head. This meant a bit more work for me sewing wise, but it also meant the mask would be more secure and comfortable while I slept.
The attachment of the straps took longer than I anticipated. I wanted to keep the strap color of thread only on the straps and not on the black fabric of the sleep mask, so I finished it by hand.
In hindsight, I should have cut the elastic a little less than exactly in half. The strap that sits above my ears is a little tight and the strap that sits below my ears is a little loose. Overall, I am pretty pleased with myself though.
Final thoughts on my new sleep mask.
Having a frame of reference in my mind helped me. I knew what a sleep mask looked like. I didn’t feel the need to look up a pattern or instructions. This also helped me be a lot more forgiving with myself. With no instructions to follow I didn’t overanalyze every step before I did it. I had an idea and I gave it a go. That was really freeing. If you would like to make a sleep mask but you would like to follow some instructions, I’d recommend this YouTube video. They do a great job explaining every step.
To answer the main question you’ve probably been wondering: Did I finish my sleep mask within an hour? No, no I didn’t. It took me nearly two hours on the nose. Am I disappointed? Not one bit. I didn’t have a sleep mask two hours before and now I do, that’s amazing! I’m proud of myself. It’s been a great night. Coincidentally, Hubby finished his project and was climbing into bed just as I finished up my sleep mask.
The sleep mask had been a resounding success. My quality of sleep has greatly improved. I wake up less throughout the night. Bonus that the sleep mask stays in place all night. I had no concept of what time it is until my alarm goes off in the morning. I do wake up with a higher amount of crusty bits in my eyes than before, but I will happily take that trade off.
So, what did I learn from making this?
If someone challenges you (or you challenge yourself) to create something and you have all of the supplies and abilities to make it happen, do it! Don’t second guess yourself, no making excuses, just dive right in. I had so much fun working on this sleep mask.
I have abandoned projects in the past due to frustration or boredom. But with the short time frame I stayed engaged and happy the whole time. If I can break my future projects down into manageable chunks with concrete goals, like this one, I might mitigate that frustration or boredom from happening. Every little victory felt a lot bigger, I think because of that limited timeframe.
All-in-all, I’m happy I did this. I now have a new sleep mask that I made with my own two hands. My sleep quality has improved and I don’t need to waste my time every night trying to block any source of light I can see. I’m proud of me, Hubby is proud of me too, and that feels pretty good.
I hope this encourages you to tackle a little project or challenge in your life. If you’re anything like me, it’ll make you feel all happy inside everytime you look at what you’ve accomplished. For now, I’ll see you folks later, I’m going to go make another sleep mask!
