Deborah Moebes’s Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew, One Project at a Time* includes a relaxing eye mask project. The project has you create an eye mask filled with lentils and your choice of pretty smelling things.

I used the following supplies:

• The red with pink spots fat quarter from Color Wheel Fat Quarter Sampler*.
• The Rose Pink thread from ThreadNanny 25 Large Spools of 3-PLY Polyester threads*
• Dried Red Lentils
• Dried Rose Petals
• Dried Orange Peel*

Total Materials Cost (1 mask): $15.41

A second mask only incurred the cost of a second fat quarter.

• Anapola Modern Summer white and grey fat quarter from Mass Drop bundle

Total Materials Cost (2 masks): $17.72

Time Spent: About 2 hours

The first order of business in this project is making the mask’s ties. The ties are challenging because they are tiny and need to be turned inside out after sewing. I pulled the first tie inside out using only my fingers (pulling a tiny bit up at a time) with much frustration. Deborah recommends using a knitting needle to assist with this step. Unfortunately the ball on mine was too big to be of help. So I tried to use the point of my knitting needle and successfully poked a hole in the fabric (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻.  My fingers were cramped after I finished the first one. I still had the longer of the two ties to invert!

I found a crochet hook to help me out. The longer tie was a bit too long for my crochet hook to be entirely effective though. At my complaints, Alek found me a drink stirrer with a ball on the bottom – I had the second tie inverted in no time flat!

Stitching this piece wasn’t very difficult, I just went slowly to take care with the curves. I made the lentil, rose petal, and orange peel mixture to fill it with. I asked Alek to hold the mask while I filled it, I’m pretty sure that filling required two people. Finally I hand stitched the seam where I left the opening for filling.

The finished product has a nice romantic scent and feels nice and cool! Its a great mother’s day gift!

I had enough of the lentil, rose petal, orange peel mixture to make a second one of these. I choose a white and grey fat quarter from the Massdrop Modern Summer Anapola Fat Quarter Bundle. This one made a wonderful bridal shower gift.

*These are Amazon Associate links