Angela DeDear of Liberty is putting her skills as a seamstress to good use during the Coronavirus pandemic. She and a group of other seamstresses from Liberty County are creating fabric masks to help keep medical providers safe as they see patients, potentially coming in contact with germs that cause Coronavirus (COVID-19).
The project started after a friend, knowing DeDear’s accomplished skills on the sewing machine, reached out to ask for 10 fabric masks. DeDear, a realtor for Remax Rewards of Huffman, said she began looking for patterns online and stumbled across a Facebook ground that is attempting to create 1 million fabric masks to help with the COVID-19 outbreak.
“They were using a super easy pattern. I like this pattern because you can place a filter of your choice in it and it has a nose piece made of bread ties,” DeDear said. The filter, which can be as simple as a coffee filter, can be inserted into the mask and removed so the mask can be washed and reused, she added.
When word began to spread that DeDear was making masks for her friends, she began to receive other requests from local medical professionals.
“Other local groups started reaching out to say they didn’t have masks and were in desperate need of them,” she said. “I decided that instead of participating in the Facebook mask challenge that I would devote my time to making masks for people here in the county. I am going to focus on local first. Then, when that need it met, I will start shipping them out to California where the 1 million mask project originated.”
So far, she’s been working on the project for two days and has already completed 30 masks, finishing about one every 15 minutes.
“My goal is to sew until I run out of elastic straps and fabric. There are a bunch of us sewing these. We want to put it out there for anyone who can sew. There is a need and you can help,” DeDear said. “It’s really one of the only ways I can help my community right now.”
She said that even beginner seamstresses should find the patterns easy to make. The stitching doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective.
“Honestly, these will probably end up being thrown away before too long. They are just to fill the need we have right now,” she said. “If the doctors’ offices, nursing homes and hospitals want me to pick them up and wash them for them to use again, I will do that gladly and deliver them.”
DeDear says the masks should be made of a cotton or poly-cotton fabric, something that would be suitable for quilting. These fabrics are typically very economical and easy to find. Each mask has four layers of fabric.
“The Harry Potter ones are my favorite. I put a label in them that says ‘Made With Love.’ It’s my way to say I appreciate you,” she said.
If anyone wants to help, call DeDear at 936-334-4138.
I think this is awesome but I wish people would also consider making these for grocery store and other retail stores employees since we are out there serving the public to ensure store shelves are as stocked as possible