Sleeping mask

Pattern: none, I improvised

Fabric: printed cotton, printed flannel, pastel silk

Haberdasheries: 25-30 cm elastic

As I wrote in my post about my ruffled blackout curtains, exposure to light at night can substantially lower your melatonin level, which lowers sleep quality, and can cause a variety of problems, from weight gain to depression. I’m not sure whether this only applies to light entering the eyes, or whether light falling on the skin has an effect as well, but I assume the former is the most important. So, as it isn’t always possible to have blackout curtains (for instance, when sleeping in a white bell tent during re-enactment events!), I made a sleeping mask.

It was based on my friend Neenkster’s project, which made me realise I might as well make one myself when I couldn’t find one quickly. I wanted to use a cheerful printed fabric, like Neenkster did, for the outside, and a soft silk for the inside. But those two thin layers didn’t seem quite opaque enough to me, so I added two additional layers of printed flannel which I had left from making my flannel pyjama trousers. I’d have preferred unprinted flannel, but I couldn’t find any in my stash and didn’t want to buy anything for this tiny and last-minute project! Anyway, the print doesn’t show through the other fabrics.

I sewed the layers together with the elastic in between, leaving a gap at the top for turning the mask outside out. Then I topstitched around the edge to close the gap and keep the layers in place
(which, on second thoughts, would have looked a lot neater if I had used light blue yarn on my bottom bobbin!).