I love to wear a sleep mask at night. I don’t want to see the light from the phone, or the alarm clock, or the smoke detector.

We were on holidays when I first realized how great a sleep mask was. The smoke detector was right over the bed and shining its evil green light in my eyes all night long. I went shopping the next day.

The one I’ve been wearing, well, it was old and falling apart. It was long past time for a new one. I looked around the web and found this pattern.

This pattern (and the image) are both from PetitBebeCreatioNZ on Craftsy. The photo has a link in it, so you can just click on that and it will take you right to the pattern.

It’s a great pattern with wonderful instructions.

What’s left of my old purchased one is shown at the top of the photo. It was literally falling apart – that’s just the inner piece. There was also the back and front that fell off it. Below it is the sleep mask I made using the free pattern. These are pretty much the same size.

However, it’s summer here and the sun is up early and down late. I don’t want any light at all. It was time to supersize my sleep mask. I found another free pattern on So Sew Easy. I found the instructions so thorough from the first pattern that I used them again and didn’t even glance at the other instructions, just the pattern.

Here you can see the new oversized one compared to the old fallen apart one. It’s definitely bigger.

Yes! Now we’re talking block out all the light.

For comparison’s sake, here are both of my new ones.

That is seriously oversized! But I’m happy with it.

Another definite bonus of making my own sleep mask is I can measure how much elastic I need to fit me. The store-bought mask had Velcro to fasten it – and that Velcro caught in my hair all the time until I replaced it. This is good right from the start.

Happy creating!