We’re onto our second week in the Summer Travel Series, and today we’re talking sleep!
Does anyone else have an issue with how bright morning is? We have room darkening shades and sometimes the light sneaks in through the cracks in just the right angle to be really annoying.
So when we go camping it’s too freaking bright to sleep. The thin nylon tent just doesn’t cut it when you’re used to sleeping in absolute darkness.
Sure, sure, sunrise is absolutely beautiful, but I’m so tuned into the light cycle that before the sun is even thinking about coming over the horizon my body is telling me it’s time to wake up. When camping I’m an early riser. As in awake at the crack of dawn type of person. Like first person awake in the entire campground. Trust me, nobody in their right mind is up at 4:30 am. Except for me.
Typically we go camping for just a day or two at a time so I can catch up on sleep after we get back home, but this year we’re going to be gone for more than just a couple days and there’s no way I’ll be functional after a few days of such little sleep.
Enter sleeping mask.
I don’t know why I waited so long to make one of these because they’re super easy. You’ll probably spend more time collecting together your fabric than you will on actually making it.
I’m not writing a tutorial for this. I don’t feel it’s worth my time or energy writing something up when there’s already so many excellent resources available. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel and all that.
I followed this excellent tutorial from Tilly and the Buttons that includes a free printable pattern and clear, concise directions.
I did however make two changes.
One, I did not make the fancy elastic cover for the elastic. I wanted to bang these out quick and I didn’t want to slow myself down with that.
Two, instead of stuffing the batting inside the mask after sewing, I sewed all three layers together like this:
Batting on the bottom, backing fabric in the middle (face up), and front fabric on the top (face down).
Then sew just like she says, leaving the gap to turn it, and it works just fine!
And because I’m not a hand sewing kind of person I top stitched around the whole thing after turning, doing duel duty of closing the hole and giving it a nice finishing touch all at the same time!
This was a great project for using up scraps as well! The elastic was left over from last week’s car organizer, my mask was from some extra geode dyed fabric (though you can’t really tell from this section – it looks more like it was just ice dyed), and my hubby’s was some leftover black stars from my galaxy quilt. Oh yeah, and some random leftover quilt batting! Literally everything was leftovers is amazing for me! (I’m really bad at using up scraps – it’s something I really need to work on…)
The first time my hubby tried his out he was in such a great mood the next morning because of how much better he slept since, as he kept telling me, it was so nice and dark.
I’m really looking forward to more sleep! Maybe now I’ll be able to start getting up at normal person early!
