News Photo by Julie Riddle Amber Sammons, employee at JOANN Fabrics and Crafts in Alpena, cuts fabric for a mask-making customer on Friday morning.

ALPENA — JOANN Fabrics and Crafts, a sewing and craft store on Alpena’s south side, buzzed with customers on Friday morning.

“People are just so happy to be here,” said Amber Sammons, a masked and cheerful employee who has been snipping fabric and bustling about the store since it was closed to walk-in customers in mid-March to fight the spread of the coronavirus.

Now that the store is reopened to indoor traffic, employees are “a whole different kind of busy” than when their jobs as essential workers kept them coming to work while many people stayed home, Sammons said.

While the store’s doors were closed, work hours were packed and fast-paced, with employees acting as personal shoppers, fetching supplies from all over the store to fill curbside orders, Sammons said.

Trying her best to help customers navigate what is usually a see-and-feel shopping experience, Sammons would hold bolts of fabric up in the window while shoppers stood on the sidewalk, hoping to find just the right item to meet a sewer’s needs.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Amber Sammons, employee at JOANN Fabrics and Crafts in Alpena, selects fabric from the clearance aisle to make one of hundreds of mask kits given away by the store in recent months.

When employees weren’t scurrying about the store to fill orders or answering the phone, which started ringing hours before the store opened, they were cutting yards and yards — and yards — of fabric.

The Alpena JOANN, along with other stores in the franchise, responded to the pandemic by giving away mask-making kits. Locals could stop by the store and pick up a plastic bag filled with fabric, thread, patterns, and elastic, enough to make about nine masks.

Mask kits flew out of the store, up to 100 a day, Sammons said. And, when many mask-makers brought their completed masks back for the store to give away, those disappeared just as quickly.

When word got around that the store would give out masks on a particular morning, employees arrived to find dozens of cars waiting in the parking lot.

“They were gone, in, like, 20 minutes,” Sammons marvelled. “Everyone wanted them.”

News Photo by Julie Riddle Preparing one of the hundreds of mask kits given away at JOANN Fabrics and Crafts in recent months, worker Amber Sammons measures a yard of cotton fabric on Friday.

At least once, the store ran out of spools of thread, and the elastic usually used to make ear loops was depleted completely for some time. Employees got creative, grabbing stretchy cord from the jewelry aisle and ransacking other departments in search of elastic alternatives.

From mask-makers longing to help their community be safe to crafters and seamstresses aching for the therapy of working with their hands, customers kept coming during the semi-closure — so much so that the store’s manager sometimes worked in the dark during non-store hours, knowing that, if the lights were on, people would start tugging at the doors.

Some days, Sammons would go home defeated, overwhelmed by the flurry of the day and knowing some customers had gone home disappointed.

The next day, though, she’d be back at work, scissors and smile at the ready.

“Hey, guys,” she’d tell coworkers whenever there was a quiet moment. “Let’s start making some more face masks.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.