Custom embroidered face masks can retail for $15 each and cost under $2.00 to make!
Custom face masks are a quick and easy way to make put some life back into your embroidery business.
Not only are companies making face masks mandatory, many local governments are putting masks ordinances in place. This has led to a HUGE rise in the popularity of both fashion and branded face masks.
Making a custom face mask with embroidery is a great way to help your customers feel better about wearing them AND is a big boost to your business.
Unique and HIGH VALUE Embroidery Offering
Products You’ll Need
Embroidery Machine
In this video we are making custom face masks with an Avance 1501C 2020 business class embroidery machine.
Blank Face Masks
The blank mask you’ll see is the District V.I.T. Face Masks. These can be found on Colman and Company with no order minimum required.
These cotton masks secure over the face with elastic head straps. This means no discomfort around the ears!
Embroidery Supplies
For backing we recommend our tear away backing, this provides some extra stability. We sell our tear away backing in both a roll and pre-cut sheets.
We then finished this custom embroidered mask with a piece of Cover Up. Cover Up is commonly used on baby clothes.
This material will help reduce irritation which is extra important for masks as they tend to rub sensitive areas of the face.
The Cover Up is heat activated so we use cut out pieces of our lower heat press platen pad to make a raised, flat surface for our embroidered design.
Steps to Take Making Custom Face Masks
Here are the steps we took to make the custom embroidered face mask in the video above.
Digitizing your design
Remember that the more complicated or large your embroidery design is the more stitches it will require. And the more stitches it requires the heavier it will be and the more it will block air flow in the custom mask you’re creating.
If you’re doing your own digitizing just make sure the design has lots of open spaces or is off center.
You might consider using a digitizing service, like http://coldesi-graphics.com. They’ll not only digitize the design perfectly, but they’ll sew it out on similar material so you can see how it looks and how it sews out.
Hooping your blank face mask
While you can use standard embroidery hoops, for this job we are using our Allied Gridlock Hoop. This is a premium hooping system that has gridlines to ensure your garment is perfectly in place.
- 1. Place your masks in the hoop with two sheets of 1.5-ounce tear away backing. (Tip: Make sure the blank mask is not hooped upside down, check the metal nose piece!)
- 2. We recommend hooping your face mask loosely, then once it looks in place tighten your hoop with the extra-long external adjustment screw.
- 3. Place your hoop on your embroidery machine.
Cover up and Using a Heat Press Platen Pad
You can use a variety of materials for to make sure the area you’re going to embroider on your mask is FLAT. That can be tough with many blank masks because they’re made to curve around your mouth and nose.
Please make sure the material is firm enough to withstand the pressure of a heat press and won’t melt when heat is applied. The Heat press platen pad we used is perfect!
The Cover Up material needs to be completely flat with no wrinkles when heat pressed onto the mask. So, we recommend cutting two different sizes of the lower heat press pad to create a pyramid like structure that your mask will fit snug around.
Finishing with Coverup using a Heat Press
- 1. Lay out the roll of Cover Up and cut out a piece that will fit perfectly over just your embroidered design.
- 2. Fit your face masks over the stacked heat press pads
- 3. Smooth out a piece of Cover Up on the back side of the embroidered area.
- 4. Heat press the mask on 280 degrees for about 10-12 seconds to activate the glue. (Tip: Always use a finishing sheet to protect your heat press)
- 5. Your Custom Embroidered Face Masks is now complete!
Now let’s look at whether or not embroidering masks is good business!
How much can I make selling embroidered face masks?
Sew out time for this design was under 5 minutes. So, you can easily embroider about 11 custom face masks an hour.
A quick discussion on our Custom Apparel Startups Facebook Group shows that most of our customers are selling custom embroidered face masks for about $20 each.
This means you can make about $220.00 an hour with embroidered face masks.
Revenues per hour: 11 face masks per hour X $20.00/mask = $220.00
Since payments on the Avance 1501C business embroidery can around $200-250/month – it looks like a few hours’ worth of making custom masks will make your business cash flow!
More about the Avance 1501C:
The 2020 Avance 1501C boast exciting new features like:
- Full color touch screen control panel - makes it so simple to use!
- 28 on board fonts for easy monogramming and lettering projects
- HUGE design memory on board - 800 designs or 100 million stitches
- FAST design load - saves production time
- Network Ready - load designs from anywhere
- Thread break detection
- Quiet Operation! - quieter than our previous model
- Real time stitching preview
- Pinpoint laser for perfect embroidery positioning
The masks featured on this page are not intended for use by health care professionals and is not intended as a replacement for personal protective equipment. These make no claims of antimicrobial protection, antiviral protection, particulate filtration, or infection prevention or reduction. These products are not FDA cleared or approved. The CDC provides great information about face coverings and their uses.
