Happy Monday!
I hope you all are staying sane during this quarantine. I’m feeling a lot better now than I was at the beginning of last week. I’m enjoying time with my kiddos (except for when they’re fighting) and I’ve found another purpose to engage in while under lock and key, and that is sewing face masks for healthcare workers.
I’ve seen several posts posts and articles about how there is a major shortage of hospital grade face masks (N95) across the nation. Consequently, nurses are now only given one mask for their entire shift and sometimes they even have to reuse them for several days. This puts them at greater risk of contamination. A call for help has been put out and seamstresses are being called upon to sew cloth masks that can be put over their N95 masks. Cloth masks can be changed out and washed frequently, thereby adding more protection to the filtered mask underneath. Obviously these aren’t medical grade and are most effective when used with the N95 masks, but at this point they predict that they may end up with no masks at all, due to the shortage, and they will take whatever they can get.
Of course when I saw this call for help, I couldn’t ignore it. Sewing is my jam! And to be honest, it’s been kind of hard to feel motivated to design and sew with everything else going on. I feel more motivated to help in this cause!
I always like to take opportunities to teach my kids about service; I think it’s important for them to learn how to think about other people and do good in the world. I had the bright idea that we would all engage in an afternoon of making masks together. Over the weekend, I made an assembly line of jobs for everyone: cutting out, pinning pieces together, sewing, flipping and ironing…
We look like one happy, helpful family, but don’t be fooled. There was plenty of complaining and bickering! (Just keepin’ it real!) But we were able to complete 15 masks and I’d like to think that someday they will look back on this experience and see that their parents taught them to be engaged in a good cause. There were some sweet moments mixed in there; like when my younger son taught his older brother how to sew on the machine. It was really cute to see him as a teacher and he has really absorbed what I’ve been teaching him in his sewing lessons!
If you feel the urge to help, there are lots of videos and tutorials out there, but I am sharing mine with you here. It’s the same one that the Deaconess Hospital has floating around, except I feel like my way of sewing on the elastic is a little easier, especially for beginning sewers 🙂 One thing to note is that it’s really hard to find elastic right now. I was able to order some from etsy.
Here’s what you need:
- Two cotton rectangles, cut 6″ by 9″
- Two pieces of either 1/4″ or 3/8″ elastic, cut to 7″
Notes:
- To add more layers of protection, you can add one or two extra layers inside the mask.
- If you can’t find elastic, you can sew on straps instead. To do that, cut out 2″ strips that are about 40″ long each. You would sew your sides first (right sides together), flip it and sew in your pleats. Your top and bottom will still have raw edges; sew your straps across the top. To sew the straps, you fold in half and iron first, then fold each of your raw edges into the fold line. Make sense? I’ll try to work on a tutorial for that this week and update it here 🙂
You can see my tutorial on how to sew the masks here:
For donations, check with your local hospitals. I haven’t even gotten to that point because I have had several nurse/law enforcement/postal worker friends who have contacted me about needing masks. I am willing to bet that you all have friends out there who could use the protection and support!
Sew now, or pin this project for later!
