Since about last May, I’ve been doing a whole lot of sewing. (Fortuitously, I replaced my ancient sewing machine a couple of months earlier.) Most of it has been masks. With MaskUpNM, a volunteer group, I’ve been making masks for health care workers, women’s shelters, the Navajo Nation and other New Mexico tribes, impoverished school children, and so on.
In December, the group started making scrub caps for ICU nurses at local hospitals, who have been exhausted and overwhelmed taking care of Covid patients. Many of them don’t get issued scrub caps by their employers, or only get disposable ones that are uncomfortable and wasteful of resources. After replacing my ancient serger, which seized up halfway through this project, I just finished the second round of scrub caps for this effort – 48 caps.
Since I’m blessed with stable finances, I have been purchasing my own fabric rather than using fabric donated to MaskUpNM (they can always use more). This allows me to choose designs I enjoy working with.
Handling these beautiful, colorful fabrics is highly therapeutic for me, which is one of the reasons I keep doing this. And knowing that I am making a contribution, however small, that will improve other people’s lives, is also extremely soothing in these chaotic times.
You’re a heroine of the revolution, Pati!
Early on, when there was still a lot of debate about which mask pattern was the most useful (I had a specific recipient in mind, and they were debating the merits) I made scrub caps while I waited for guidance on how to be sewing. And you’re right–being able to work with pretty fabric is therapeutic, not only for the sewist, but for the recipient. After my first batch of scrub caps went out, I received a photo of a bunch of health care workers wearing them, and it was so cheering!
Even now, when I get pre-cut “kits” from It Takes a Village (the local volunteer group I wound up working with), I continue to make masks with my own fabric for other destinations, and the fabric choice is no small part of the effort.
Takes one to know one, Mad. 🙂
Our group is also sharing out tasks like cutting. Interesting – the complex adaptive system at work.
We have people making ear-savers, too. Everytime I see someone on TV with their mask drooping off their face (affectionately known as “dick-masks” in our household), I itch to mail them an ear-saver.
The mask goes over your nose, people.
The mask should fit close to your face. No gaps!