I Made a Drum

I think that I mentioned I have begun to use my mom’s old sewing machine to do assorted shop projects, some clothing repairs and of course make enough face masks so that I have enough face masks. Calgary’s weather is a little odd to say the least, tonight for instance it will feel like -21⁰ C and this coming Tuesday it will be +10⁰ C. We just can’t rely on the weather to stay normal. Of course it is nice when it warms up suddenly but not so nice when it gets far too cold for the season/

 

Keeping that in mind, I have an assortment of coats and jackets in the closet that I keep rotating through pretty much the year round. I have very light wind breakers right up to a parka that keeps me warm when it is minus 40⁰. In the pockets of all of those coats I have a pair of mini gloves because when the weather is mild that is all that I need and when the weather is “I wish I were dead!” cold, all I need is to keep my hands warm during the twenty feet from the back door to the car in the garage. It may be a stupid system, but it works for me and if I have gloves in each coat then I never find myself outside in the cold without at least some protection.

 

I plan to do the same thing with masks. I will probably need more than one mask for each coat because you really should wash the mask after every use. Also, I should leave one or two masks in each of the cars just in case. I hate the idea that I will drive to the store only to find that I did remember my wallet, but forgot my mask and can’t get into the store.

 

When I was last at my favourite second hand store I noticed ten inch squares of assorted material that is meant for the beginner quilter to make a quilt. I may make a quilt this winter, but right now my interest in those squares is to make masks from them. Ten inches is just about the right size for the mask pattern that I make and 25 of the squares are about $1.50. The way I figure it I am getting each mask for about 12¢ not counting the cost of elastic. So far I have bought two packs of colourful squares for the front of the masks and one package of plain material for the lining of the masks.

 

These packages of squares come wrapped in cling wrap tapped with packing tape which once opened is pretty much useless. I started to look around the house for some kind of container that has the dimensions of 11” X 11” that will house the squares flat and make it easy…ish to sort through. I wandered the house for an hour or so trying to find the perfect container to no avail and the garage was too cold to spend very much time looking, but I am confident there wasn’t anything remotely adequate.

 

Well, the only thing that I can do is to make a shallow box for it. I had a few boards from another thing-a-ma-jig which I cut down and glued together. I had sides but no bottom for the box and I didn’t want to go out to the cold garage to cut some plywood to fit. I do have a small box of leather that I stripped from an old couch that I took apart a few years back and a leather bottom seems like the easiest thing to do. I stapled the leather on to the frame good and taut and then nailed strips of wood around the edges. It isn’t pretty, but it holds the fabric squares nicely.

An added bonus is that with the leather pulled tight it makes a pretty good drum. My buddy is into drums and drumming and I think Louise went on a drum workshop one weekend years ago, but I was born without rhythm or really any kind of musical talent.