Due to the current shortage of protective clothing, more and more people want to sew a mouthguard themselves. We explain how this works in this guide. You can read here how useful a mouthguard is and what it actually does.
Instructions: Sew your own mouthguard – step by step
IMPORTANT: Even a sewn mouthguard does not protect you from being infected with the coronavirus!
The video for the mouthguard sewing was made available to us by “Erica Arndt”. You can find more Do-IT-Yourself videos on their YouTube channel.
The “city of Essen” has also published detailed sewing instructions, which we have summarized for you here. To sew a mouthguard yourself, you need a breathable cotton fabric that can be washed at least 60 degrees, a short piece of wire, a sewing machine with a thread and an iron.
- 1 – Cut out a 17×34 cm cloth and four 2 cm wide strips from the boil-proof cotton fabric. Two strips should be 90 cm long, the other two 17 cm.
- 2 – Fold the cut cloth in half and iron over it once. Then iron three evenly spaced folds about 1.3 cm wide into the cloth.
- 3 – The four strips are now also folded lengthways in half and ironed. The two shorter ones serve as edge enhancers, with the two longer ones you will later tie the mouthguard to your head.
- 4 – Place the edge enhancers on the top and bottom of the folded sheet. In the upper amplifier, there is also a 15 cm long wire, which is used to better adapt the protection to the nose later. Now sew the strips with the cloth.
- 5 – The headbands are now placed on the side of the mouthguard so that there is enough band to attach to the head both above and below the cloth. Now sew these strips together and you’re done!
- 6 – After use, boil the reusable mouthguard or wash it at 90 degrees in the washing machine. The face mask is not certified and only serves as an alternative if there is no industrially produced mouth and nose protection.
- 7 – Download: Sew your own mouthguard – pattern (PDF)
With these above instructions, you can sew your mouthguard yourself.
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What does a mouthguard really help against?
It is a common myth that a mouthguard helps prevent self-infection. You can now read what it really does and how useful it is.
- A mouthguard protects, if at all, that you do not infect anyone else with droplets, because the droplets that are expelled by the mouthguard can be caught to a certain extent.
- As the virologist Christian Drosten explained, an aerosol in the air is unlikely to be stopped by a mouthguard. The mouthguard does not protect viruses from reaching the mouth-nose region of the mouthguard wearer.
- The WHO warns that wearing a mouthguard is supposedly safe and therefore a mouthguard can be counterproductive. In spite of the face mask, you have to wash your hands just as frequently and thoroughly and keep your distance from other people so that you do not become infected.
- Due to the current coronavirus pandemic and the resulting shortage of protective clothing, there are – despite the moderate effectiveness of the mouthguard – more and more calls to sew such protective material yourself.
- But there is also another hope against the scarcity: More and more textile companies, such as the Swabian clothing manufacturer Trigema, are converting their production to protective clothing in order to counteract the shortage.
StaySafe , StayAtHome