As we are all painfully aware, 2020 didn’t turn out to be the amazing futuristic year we’d all been imagining for all our lives. I started off this year with all kinds of sewing and knitting goals. I had gotten off to a great start with my local fabric store’s Pattern of the Month club. I had the goal of knitting one new sweater each month. I bought a 2020 planner and filled it up with all of the events I was going to attend and started designing outfits to wear to them.
Then the virus hit the United States. I started making cloth face masks for my friends and family. Then I began donating locally to my community. (I am still blown away at how many masks my local community of sewist was able to produce in such a small amount of time!) I also helped make hospital gowns with old bed sheets and fabric I had on hand.
When it became clear that everyone should be wearing a mask in public, I started selling masks in my Etsy shop too. I received a few heartbreaking messages from doctors, nurses and medical staff asking for rushed shipping on face masks because their hospitals lacked enough personal protection equipment. For a time, it seemed like the demand for masks would never subside.
In the earlier months of the pandemic, sewing masks and other PPE was one of the only things that helped me feel better because it gave me some sense that I was helping the situation in some way. I would wake up, check the latest news updates, then get to sewing masks all day long. I would see exhausted doctors and nurses on the news and all I could think was “Just keep sewing.” My husband helped iron fabric and cut out pieces while my daughter helped with pressing and inserting ties. It was a tense time due to all the uncertainty, but the work helped bring us closer together.
By now, I have made more masks than I can even count. I became burned out on masks making by the end of July and I finally admitted to myself that I needed to take a break from mask making for a while. I completely stopped sewing masks for a time and refocused on making some clothing.
Now it is mid-November and the virus rates in the United States are tragically higher than ever. While the general supply of face masks has increased due to mass production, it’s not improbable that we could find ourselves facing more PPE shortages in the near future. I’m back at making masks again.
To be honest, I’m still sick of making masks. We are all ready for this to be over. No one wants to wear a mask everywhere they go, but we are never going to get to that point unless we wear them now, and wear them consistently.
TLDR: Wear a mask!
