COVID-19, coronavirus, “the rona,” “Wuhan virus,” or its official name “SARS-CoV-2” certainly changed our lives in 2020 and turned us into “Zoomers.” “stay-at-homies,” and “social distancers,” while making us truly appreciate the people who are actually essential workers.
The beautiful model in the main photo of this post is my granddaughter, Raelynn. She’s about 4-1/2 years old in this pic. She’s so cute in the reproduction flour sack, vintage puppy dog cotton print.
Like many people who sew, I made some masks. I made a minimal number of masks compared to some people in the sewing community. However, I did contribute time and resources to make masks for organizations that needed them in our community. The ladies at my church (me included) collectively made and distributed over 3,800 masks to area organizations including the local elementary schools, shelters, medical teams and more.
Here are photos of some of the masks I made—some for family, some for friends and mostly, donated. There were four sizes including toddler, elementary school age, teenager/ladies and extra-large sizes. I mostly used scraps I had on hand from past projects. All masks were reversible and had the soft round elastic for all the earpieces. In fact, I still have LOTS of black and white ear loop elastic on hand and have no idea what to do with it other than keep it (maybe it’ll get used in a grandkid scout project someday). I found patterns for the different sizes online and then made templates from the plastic I use when making applique templates. I then added 3M stickers to the templates so they wouldn’t slide around when marking them. My favorite fabric markers are the ultra washable Crayola markers. I stitched masks using an assembly line process to improve efficiency.
I made and sold a few masks, $10 each or three for $24. The ones sold were either KC Chief’s, St. Louis Cardinals or pretty fall prints from premium metallic Robert Kaufman quilting cotton. All the masks I made for family and to sell had nose wires in them. In fact, if you’d like a custom mask from a particular fabric, you can order them in my store HERE.
In 2020, I made 26 masks for family members, sold 17 masks to friends and donated 172 to charity for a total of 215 masks. I sincerely hope we can all quickly recover, stop spreading the virus and its mutations and become vaccinated to a point of herd immunity, world wide. Unfortunately, I don’t think my mask-making and mask-wearing days are going to over any time soon. Stay well.
