Embroidery Machine

 We were able to pick up an embroidery machine for a good price. This is our first attempt that came out rather nicely. 

    We hope that being able to personalize the masks will convince more people to wear them.  

    This particular mask is a birthday present for the daughter of one of our volunteers. We only had purple thread. We are definitely going to find some lavender thread and make her a mask using that. 

 

 

 

 

     Miss Fields took whirl on the new machine as well. Apparently pink and purple were the themes of the day. 

    Now all we need to do is find whitty things to put on the masks.

 

 

   

This Week in Masks Making

It has been another week of making masks. Pictured toth e left is Miss Fields taking a break from making Panier Style Masks for adolescents. These are make from a cow jumping over the  moon print fabric. This fabric was donated a week ago with a large stash of prints and other fun things. 

    Miss Fields is also sitting at a new Kenmore Machine she has named Lacy. This machine is purring like a kitten. It was donated by someone from the nextdoor website. This was very generous and really helps us out. We are now getting to the point where we need to have machines repaired on a regular basis. We can now have three machines going at once and do not loose time to repairs.  

     Lacy also came with a sewing machine cabinet with several accessories and drawers. We have had a lot of luck with older machines. I beginning to wonder why people buy new sewing machines at all. 

    We also h/ad some good news from Duke University. They did a study on several styles of homemade mask. Our new Panier Style mask was only beaten by professionally fitted N95 Masks. Our Extended Olson also did very well. Still, it is nice to know that all the extra effort that goes into a Panier Style Mask is worth it. If it is going to be a pain in the neck to make them it is nice the extra effort is worth something. 

  The other nice thing about the study is that we are using the right material in the masks. This was more a guess on our part so it is mostly dumb luck. We will have to avoid using cotton fleece in the future. Even so we ran out it three months ago. 

     I would once again like to thank everyone that is donating to our cause. The fabric and machines have really given us the ability to punch above our weight in this crisis. If we were using our one machine and what ever fabric we could buy would would not have reach a thousand masks let alone be closing in on 3,000 masks.

    So be safe out there everyone.

    

Panier Masks

 We have a new type of mask available for the fight against the Infection that cannot be named. It is the Panier Mask. It is made to work

a bit more like the N95. it has a structure that makes it more roomy and keeps the mask off the front of one's face. It will also make it easier to put a transparent window in the front of the mask. This will make using American Sign Language easier since you can see the person's mouth moving. We made some masks with ASL Windows in the Olson Style and they are a pain in the neck with seam in the middle of the mask.

    Miss Fields is modeling this new mask. This particular one does not have a nose bridge but still first well all lone the edges of the mask. A nose bridge can be added. 

    If you would like a couple of these please visit our mask page.