Daily Check-In

[mecurtin]

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time on Monday) to midnight (8pm Tuesday Eastern Time).

Poll #23680 Daily poll

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 71

How are you doing?

I am OK
61 (85.9%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now
9 (12.7%)

I could use some help
1 (1.4%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single
31 (43.7%)

One other person
19 (26.8%)

More than one other person
21 (29.6%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

Comments

[melannen]

We have a bunch of broadcloth prints/quilting fabric of uncertain history of the "probably mostly cotton?" variety, and I haven't managed to find anything that gives a good rundown of whether poly-cotton blends that behave like cotton are okay (or even why they're asking for cotton, I'd think a washable silk would be at least as good.)

I mean, it's all cotton-ish? Cotton-ish enough to pass a basic burn test? But I don't know that there's any fabric in this house that I could guarantee is 100% cotton, unless it's printed on the selvages and we saved the right bit of selvage. So we haven't made any masks yet.

Except old clothes, but I'd worry that using worn fabric wouldn't be tightly-woven enough anymore.

[feng_shui_house]

The difference is that cotton is 'breathable' you can wear it in a face mask longer without it becoming damp/uncomfortable/difficult to breathe through. Also there was other stuff, technical, that explained why cotton was preferred, but I lost the link.

I read that you can boil cotton fabrics for 5 minutes to shrink them if you want a tighter weave. I didn't have that kind of energy, considering I was starting with my quilting cotton scrap bag with lots of pieces just big enough for one mask, so I just washed everything in the machine set for hot water twice. THIS was a mistake-- unhemmed fabric frayed everywhere, so I had to expend time sorting out that mess before I could get started.

But if you go the boiling route, be VERY careful. Easy to have the fabric slop around when you take it out, and burn you.

I was told that you can tell if it's pure cotton by folding down a bit and making a crease- if the crease holds, it's pure cotton. Much faster than the burn test, and it seemed to work- the one piece of polyester fabric in my scrap stash had come from a tablecloth and it did not crease at all even in the disaster of the fray mess.

[melannen]

Silk's breathable though, isn't it? I mean I can see why they wouldn't specifically request silk, but it ought to work.

I've been assuming it's cotton because breathable, easily washable, cheap. The high cotton poly-cotton blends keep most of the breathability and improve washability, but I'm worried there's something about sterilizing or something that really matters. I went looking for science on this back in the early days a month ago and all I found was that one equivocal study with the t-shirts, so I'd love more links. (It worries me that the local hospital linked for patterns to two mommyblogs with no citations and no discussion of fabrics or fit.)

[feng_shui_house]

I looked at SO Many many links, trying to find something useful. I'm *guessing* most hospitals sterilize cloth by autoclaving (steam under high pressure) which... I don't know if it's hot enough to melt polyester? That's a possibility?

The design I chose is probably just for adults, but since it's held on by a single loop of fabric it's readily adjustable within the usual adult range.

I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to make one for children- children are hard to fit even with the professional equipment (one of the many links I looked at said that no matter what type used, there was always a higher failure rate for children's face masks.)

Right now, I figure you do your best research, limited as it is, and hopefully the result is useful. Let the professionals at the hospital/facility judge its merits.

[azurelunatic]

https://www.deaconess.com/How-to-make-a-Face-Mask has scaled-down proportions that is their recommendation for children's face masks.

The PDF instruction there was incredibly hard for me to grasp, but the video demonstration clicked for me.

siderea found https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-face-mask-virus/ which compares the effectiveness of various fabrics.

[feng_shui_house]

Yes! THANK YOU. Those are two of the links I'd seen (and then lost in the sea of tabs that I closed after reading). I'll stick with the one I'm using, because it took me 2 days to figure it out- I don't want to start over. ;^) Besides, I like it- it can take a filter, if you have one, and the single loop allows it to be put on quickly and adjusted to a snug fit just by pulling on the ends of the tie.

I believe the need for children's masks is less acute because children seem unlikely to get severe complications. Not sure why- one dr./scientist article speculated it's because children's immune system is different from adult- it's 'innate', not 'learned'. So a foreign organism gets attacked immediately in a child, but in an adult there's a delay while the immune system learns to recognize it.

I'm sure there are places and people that need children's masks, but far more need adult sizes.

[melannen]

I think a lot of hospitals are trying to use masks for, i.e., everyone who comes into the emergency room, just to protect the health care workers, so they probably need children's ones for that.

[feng_shui_house]

*nods* I'm sure there is a need for children's masks, but from a glance at the 'request' list I saw, mostly they want adult sizes.

Possibly it's because they're prioritizing the medical workers, who are all adults?

[melannen]

Oh, cool! I'll have to read that study and see if they go into any more detail on exactly what the fabrics they tested were.

[melannen]

Yeah, I've always been the person who overthinks whether it's actually helpful to long to actually help, I need to work on that.

Surgical scrubs are usually poly-cotton blends, though, so I would hope they can go through standard hospital sterilizing laundry.

[feng_shui_house]

Oh, well then, cotton/poly blends are ok. Not sure that pure polyester would behave differently... for me, this isn't a problem because mostly what I have is quilting cotton fabric.

Still haven't got any more masks made-- I did fold and press all 49 of the ties, and sewed maybe 20? of them flat, but that's all the further I've got.

[twistedchick]

Silk ... it depends on the weave. I have worn silk saris and they are NOT breathable. And a loosely woven silk would not be good.

The other issue with silk is that if it catches on fire, it releases some quantity of ... cyanide gas? Some sort of poison gas. There was a news article a while back about a silk warehouse that burned, and this was mentioned. (No, I have no idea why silkworms create something poisonous.)

[feng_shui_house]

AH! That actually makes sense- many caterpillars eat poisonous plants and build up toxins in their bodies, which makes them unappealing to birds, who learn not to eat them.

*checks* Silkworms eat mulberry..

Toxicity: All parts of white mulberry, except for the ripe fruit, contain a milky sap (latex) that is toxic to humans. Although humans may consume ripe mulberry fruit, ingestion of unripe fruit can result in stomach upset, stimulation of the nervous system and hallucinations.

Yep, that sounds like a really good reason you don't want to run silk fabric through a high-pressure, high temperature, steam autoclave in a hospital.

[melannen]

Ah, cyanide! Ok, nope.

My silk sari is pretty breathable (And so are a couple silk scarves I have) but I've never worn them for more than an hour or two. It probably depends a lot on the exact weave and fiber, yeah.