Fashion designer, Christian Siriano is redirecting his team to start sewing medical face masks for New York hospital workers.

Can we help too?

It’s got to feel better than watching endless Netflix series, monitoring the news 24/7, or completing a puzzle. It doesn’t feel right that our health care workers are risking theirs and their family’s lives while we relax on the couch. And it’s not okay that they don’t have the protective equipment necessary.

I began searching the internet and texting friends to find out what I could about sewing masks at home.

“Face masks need to be made from specific materials,” I was told by one healthcare executive.

I looked up my local hospital website. They had created a sign-up for mask-making kits (they provide the materials and get volunteers to assemble them), but canceled the call for help after local businesses stepped in to assist.

I came across a YouTube video from a hospital in Indiana showing how to sew a mask using cotton fabric and 1/4″ wide braided elastic. It didn’t look too hard. But do hospitals want them, or not?

I dug around in my very basic sewing kit and found a small ball of elastic. My cheap but sturdy sewing machine was retrieved from the garage and dusted off.

Following the instructions (and I have only basic skills in this area), I managed to make a few colorful masks from some table runners I never got around to using. But are they needed? Should I keep going?

I realized that finding more elastic would be a challenge. None of the big stores could promise quick delivery. Etsy, however, led me to a supplier who waived her expedited shipping fee and promised that her husband would get it to the post office the next day.

While waiting for the elastic to arrive, I got back to my news feed. Doctors and nurses were being forced to reuse masks, placing them, often wet and torn after a twelve hour shift into brown paper bags for use the next day.

In another story, healthcare workers were trying to fashion personal protective equipment from office supplies and plastic soda bottles.

One explanation for the mask shortage in places like California and Australia was a run on masks to combat bad air quality during catastrophic fire seasons.

Then I saw the tags: #getmeppe, #getusppe and www.masksforheroes.com at the bottom of a news story. Social media might actually provide the community organizing we so desperately need.

Only a few hospitals are currently accepting hand-sewn masks, but in the amount of time it takes to assemble a batch, that number could increase quickly. You can look on the site above (U.S. only) or call your local hospital to check their policy on accepting hand-sewn masks.

Your fabric masks may be used for situations other than Covid-19 cases (I have two friends due to deliver their babies in the next eight weeks), or donated to homeless shelters, saving standard surgical equipment for the front lines of this pandemic.

Hint: A nurse on one #getmeppe post suggested using different color fabrics for each side of your hand-sewn masks, creating a front and a back.

Here is a link that shows how to make a standard fabric hospital mask: