Free In-The-Hoop Face Mask Embroidery Design & Tutorial

With the current outbreak of the coronavirus, it seems life as we’ve known it has come to a sudden halt. Things are changing very quickly! Walking into a store to buy milk will no longer be an option without trying to protect ourselves from the questionable bacteria lurking around. With many protective measures now offered, what are you going to be doing differently to ensure your health and safety?

As the coronavirus can be easily spread through respiratory droplets, ensuring limited exposure of your face is key! With a high demand for face masks, it isn’t easy to find any face masks to help protect ourselves. Because of this shortage, it can leave us feeling uncertain and concerned about everyday life, even when you’re just waiting in line at the grocery store! We believe that everyone should feel safe, so we are going to help show you how to create your own face mask and provide you with a face mask pattern… For free!

Download your free in-the-hoop face mask design

Our team here at Embroidery Legacy is trying to do our part in battling this pandemic by offering a free face mask design to help protect you against the spread and transmission of the coronavirus. Because of the face mask shortages, we are providing face mask design patterns for adult large and small, as well as child large and small sizes.

However, with this free design, we do ask you a small favor. Please not share these design files with others, but rather direct them to download them themselves from this page of our website. We hope that this free download will ensure better personal protection for yourself, your friends, and your family. Or, if you are distributing them as a good deed, we thank you for your active role in helping to protect the community.

You may also use these face masks for commercial purposes. With the decline in small businesses, we would like to help contribute to growing the economy. There is nothing wrong with filling a void in supply and helping to fill the demand for these masks for profit! If you previously ran an embroidery business that is now suffering or you’re currently out of work, your family still has to eat. So feel free to sell these finished embroidered masks (but not the digital design files themselves).

The dimensions of these design files are 200 X 300.

Our face mask design files are production-friendly

This in-the-hoop facemask design was specially digitized to be as production-friendly as possible. The more masks you can create within a given time frame the better. Alongside an incredibly low stitch count (which equals less run time on your machine), tear-away stabilizer is also used because it is the most cost-effective product to use. From a production standpoint, it minimizes finishing time and ensures that the only material needed within the finished mask is the outer and inner material used. Stabilizers left with the product could prevent the airflow necessary.

Supplies required:

The face mask design pattern we are providing for free download has a reduced stitch count, so you can use less resources to produce more products.

The supplies required include:

• 200 x 300 Hoop
• Two Pieces of Tear-away Stabilizer
• Painters Tape
• Stapler
• Two Straps, either elastic (two 7” straps) or cotton (four 16” straps)
• Four 10” x 10” pieces of fabric of your choice, or two 12” x 7” pieces of fabric

Which types of fabric should you use?

Certain fabrics used to create your face masks can help with breathability and the effectiveness of limiting the spread of contagious diseases:.

• Cotton is a great fabric to help filter out large particles and has excellent breathability.
• Nylon is also a recommended fabric as it has a high filtration rate, but it has limited breathability.

You can do a quick check to make sure the material you have will provide some protection by holding it up to the light and seeing if you can see through the fibers. No matter what you choose to make your face mask with, having something covering your face is better than nothing.

In-the-hoop embroidered face mask tutorial:

Part 1

Step 1: Hoop your Tear-away Stabilizer and place on your machine. If you need some assistance for hooping techniques, click here

Step 2: Run placement stitches

Step 3: Lay your fabric over the placement stitches, make sure it lays flat and fully covers.

Lay your fabric over the other side, it can overlap slightly in the middle.

Step 4: Smooth out the fabric. Run the tack-down stitch.

Step 5: Next run the logo.

Step 6: Lay the strap in the top corner and tape in place. Make sure it covers the line so it will get sewn in. Bring the other end of the strap down to the other corner and make sure it covers the bottom line. Tape it in place.

Make sure the tape is outside of the stitching areas.

Step 7: Run the tack-down stitch to hold the strap in place. Make sure both sides grab and are sewn down in place.

Step 8: Take your second piece of fabric and place it face down on top of each side. Make sure they lay as flat as possible.

Step 9: Run the next tack-down stitch. This finishes Part 1. Remove it from your machine.

Part 2

Step 1: Remove everything from your hoop and cut down the middle to separate them.

Step 2: Cut about 1/8th of an inch away from the bean stitch

Just outside of the “bean stitch”

Cut right along the remaining lines.

Cut out the second side the same way.

Step 3: Remove stabilizer from both sides

Step 4: Turn both pieces inside out. Finger press the seams

Step 5: Line up all 4 pieces exactly together.

Step 6: Staple the sides together. Make sure it’s all lined up smoothly

Step 7: Hoop your second piece of stabilizer

Step 8: Run the placement line

Step 9: Position the mask in place, making sure it’s lined up to the guide.

Step 10: Sew the next tack down stitches

Step 11: Remove from the stabilizer and cut along the edge. Turn it inside out.

Step 12: All done! Congratulations you just made yourself a face mask

Comes in Adult large and small, and Child large and small. Includes SVG file.

A commercial machine will speed up your production

Like anything, when it comes to making more masks, you need the right tools for the job. Creating 1 mask at a time on your flatbed machine is a great way to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases for yourself, but if you’re really looking to make a difference creating them for others (whether it be for goodwill or business purposes), having a commercial machine will significantly increase your productivity.

Using the ZSK as an example (given that in our opinion, it is the best commercial machine available), using their sash frame attachment this machine allows you to create 2 masks at a time for step 1 of our tutorial process outlined above, and 6 masks at a time for step 2. Not to mention that the ZSK can also run at 1200 stitches per minute with precision. In comparison, most home machines run between 500 – 1000 stitches per minute.

Using a quality commercial machine can more than triple your mask output!

What’s next?

The next step is to download our free mask pattern by clicking here if you haven’t already.

Let me be the first to thank you for doing your part in helping to stop the spread of this infectious disease! Whether it’s for personal or business purposes, we’re all in this together, and every mask made is another step towards us getting things back (at least somewhat) to where they were before this pandemic struck.

Have a question or comment? Please post them below.

Stay safe & blessings to you and your family.

P.S. If you’ve never used our designs before we invite you to download our Free Embroidery Legacy Design Kit or check out the other 30,000 embroidery designs we have to offer. We sincerely appreciate your support!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a medical-grade face mask. Fabric face masks are not meant to replace surgical masks or N-95 respirators. They are not equivalent, nor should be replaced, with certified personal protective equipment. This face mask will not protect against any virus but can aid in preventing the spread of diseases if worn properly. Wearing a DIY face mask is better than nothing at all. More information on the Coronavirus can be viewed on the CDC’s website