Pitching in:

Crafters help out by sewing masks for high-risk workers

Gina Sandoval’s hand was cramping Monday morning from cutting cotton fabric to make face masks for people who have a high risk of contracting COVID-19.

Her employer, Joann Fabric and Craft, has mobilized a mask-making effort by people across the nation by handing out free grab bags containing all the materials needed to stitch together protective face coverings.

By noon Monday, the national chain’s Santa Fe branch had already run out of the mask-making kits — having handed out at least 50 — with enough materials to make five adult masks. Meanwhile, Sandoval and her co-workers were making more.

But, like many retailers in town, the fabric and craft store has a shortage of certain products as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Rather than hand sanitizer or toilet paper, the sought-after item amid the spread of the new coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, is elastic used to hold masks on the face.

“It’s gone in one day,” said Sandoval, who has worked at

the store for nine years and has never seen anything like this. “We put it on the shelf and it’s gone. Everybody is just pulling together to make these masks.”

Manager Katrina McGarrah said a shipment of elastic is on the way. In the meantime, workers are including some bias tape for fastening masks made from the kits, which also include thread and a pattern.

McGarrah said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that as long as the masks are made of two layers of cotton fabric with a tight weave, no interfacing is needed.

“Cotton fabric is the easiest to breathe through,” she said, and has better blocking capabilities than other materials. She said studies have shown vacuum filters to be one of the most effective materials for blocking particles out, but they are hard to breathe through.

Some customers use their own patterns, adding a pocket in front where a disposable filter could be inserted.

The pattern Joann is handing out was created by a nurse, McGarrah said. The company began encouraging people to make masks after hearing reports that at-risk workers, particularly those in the medical field, have run short of masks to help protect them from the virus.

“Amidst the coronavirus crisis, doctors and nurses are running short on N95 masks, which protect against virus transmissions,” the store’s website says. “In some cases, medical workers have been forced to sanitize and reuse their masks, going against [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines, while others have resorted to using scarves or bandanas to protect their faces.”

Luckily, McGarrah said, Santa Fe hospitals don’t seem to be out of masks, but, she said, she has gotten calls from shelters asking for them.

Asked how effective homemade masks are, New Mexico Department of Health spokesman David Morgan said the agency “seconds the guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

“In settings where face masks are not available, [health care practitioners] might use homemade masks … for care of patients with COVID-19 as a last resort,” according to the CDC’s website. “However, homemade masks are not considered [personal protective equipment] since their capability to protect … is unknown. Caution should be exercised when considering this option. Homemade masks should ideally be used in combination with a face shield that covers the entire front (that extends to the chin or below) and sides of the face.”

McGarrah said people who pick up the kits are encouraged to bring the finished masks back to the store for distribution, “but we won’t be tracking them down.”

A steady stream of seamstresses — some who regularly sew and others who hadn’t pulled out their machines in years — stopped by to pick up kits along with supplies for their own projects Monday.

Sherry Kelley, a 43-year-old child care worker who was heading in to the store to pick up a few mask kits to make with her 14-year-old daughter, said the project is helping them pass the time while Kelley is out of work, and making them feel useful.

“It’s a little stressful, but this is helping me feel like ‘OK, I’m doing something good,’ ” she said, adding, “Sorry I’m rambling. You’re the first person I’ve talked to in a while.”

Kelley said it’s only been a week and a half since she stopped working but “it feels like a long time. I’m an introvert and I’m still finding it hard.”

Kelley said she and her daughter will use her grandmother’s 1950s-era sewing machine.

“It only does a straight stitch,” she said with a laugh.

Inside the store, labor and delivery nurse Paula Federici, 67, and her adult daughter were buying yards of fabric printed with whimsical red strawberries to make masks for Federici’s co-workers at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.

Federici, who said she’s been a nurse for 43 years, most of them in Santa Fe, said the hospital hasn’t run out of masks. But she decided to whip up several dozen, “just in case we need them.”

“There is a national shortage, she said. “We want to be able to protect ourselves.”

Diana Melina, 36, was wearing a blue fabric mask she said she picked up last year in Vietnam to protect her against breathing in pollution. She said she has been delivering fabric to seamstress friends who are quarantined at home, then picking up finished masks and distributing them to high-risk people.

Melina said she had delivered eight masks to co-workers at the catering service where she worked before being laid off recently because of the pandemic. Melina said that business has switched over to providing meals to people in need.

“I like to think of them as face diapers,” she said, “to keep your germs away from others.”

By 5 p.m., McGarrah said the store had given away 97 mask-making kits.