Making masks a glorious task

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This article was published 25/01/2021 (1718 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Long after the initial panic subsided for homemade fabric masks, Linden Woods resident Sharon Erickson-Nesmith keeps turning them out, determined to make a difference in her corner of the world.

“It’s an easy way to do some good during a time when I had time to help,” explains the 68-year-old retired grandmother of sewing hundreds of fitted face masks for charity and family since last April.

Despite the increased commercial availability of non-medical reusable masks 10 months into the pandemic, home sewists of all ages continue to stitch face coverings for Winnipeg charities, enabling non-profit agencies to provide free non-medical masks for clients without cutting into their program budgets.

Sewists across the city donated about 5,000 reusable fabric masks to the three drop-in sites run by 1JustCity, giving their clients both a feeling of safety and inclusion, said executive director Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud.

“They get to feel safe when they go out, but they also get a sense of normalcy and a sense of belonging,” she said of people wearing the cloth masks donated since last March.

Along with making masks for at least a dozen family members spread from Ontario to B.C., Erickson-Nesmith sewed 300 masks on her old Kenmore sewing machine for Days for Girls, an international aid organization providing washable feminine hygiene products and health education to girls.

In April, the local chapter switched focus from making washable hygiene products to sewing reusable fabric masks for seven local charities, donating nearly 2,400 before pausing the project at the end of December, said Janet Menec, lead for the Winnipeg group.

“I think it just speaks to the mandate for Days for Girls. It’s just grassroots volunteers helping make a difference in the lives of people around the world,” said Menec, who spent months cutting out mask parts from 160 metres of fabric and compiling them into kits for volunteers to pick up.

“This was an opportunity to do that locally.”

The pandemic also gave sewists a common thread, despite working from home by themselves instead of gathering in groups for a sewing bee, said Marion McKay, who organized a dozen of her quilting friends to make 500 masks for 1JustCity, where she serves on the board.

“I was just determined that people who are marginalized would have access to the same personal protective equipment as those not marginalized,” said McKay.

“To me it was a social justice issue.”

Instead of being on the front lines, the former public health nurse employed her sewing skills instead of her medical expertise for the safety and well-being of others.

“It never occurred to me in my early retirement years I would be doing public health with my sewing machine,” said McKay, who sewed several isolation gowns for staff at West Broadway Community Ministry early in the pandemic.

The patchwork of volunteers lending their expertise and time to sewing masks continues to grow and change, with new people coming on while others hang up their sewing shears after months of mask making. River Height resident Angela O’Connor recently reached out through social media to establish a network of about 20 people willing to sew masks for the city’s non-profit sector, using her marketing skills to collect orders of 2,500 in just a few weeks.

“It’s just me, doing my thing and it’s getting a lot bigger,” she says of her idea of connecting mask makers with charities.

“You start probing and digging and there’s a lot of need out there.”

Filling that need with a home-sewn mask means more than just providing safety from the coronavirus for already vulnerable people, said Angela McCaughan of SSCOPE, an organization which runs a 55-bed shelter in the former Neechi Commons building on Main Street.

She said wearing a cloth mask, especially one made with colourful printed fabric, shows someone has a home and a place to do laundry, as well as providing a visible sign another person cares enough to sew for them.

“It’s like a hug. We can’t hug each other now, but giving someone a mask, especially a fabric mask and a place to wash it is pretty fantastic,” said McCaughan.

brenda@suderman.com