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Sewing army makes at least 30,000 masks

News Photo by Julie Riddle Sophia Losinski, who turns 13 on Sunday, irons fabric for masks in her stepdad’s Alpena “man cave” — now converted to a mask room where she and her mother work with family friends to protect Northeast Michiganders from the coronavirus.

ALPENA — One hundred years ago, women fought a war.

Their men away, huddling in the trenches of World War I, women stepped out of their domestic lives and found a new role as a great war effort called on their skills and their strength to keep America strong.

Sepia-tone posters depicted women fighting the good fight as they bought war bonds, grew victory gardens, farmed and fished in the Women’s Land Army, donned police and firefighter uniforms, and made gun barrels and shell casings in munitions factories.

A century later, women are once again a part of a war effort — this time, seated at sewing machines.

Across Northeast Michigan, women — and a few men — are industriously choosing fabric, threading bobbins, and hunting for elusive elastic as they snip, steam, and sew their part in the great fight against the coronavirus that has killed more than 100,000 Americans.

As the coronavirus crawled its way into Michigan, more and more Michiganders were required to cover their noses and mouths, an imperfect but still — most believe — crucial step in combating the virus’s spread and saving lives.

In April, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered all Michiganders, whenever around other people indoors, to don a cloth mask — a health care item most people didn’t already have in their closets or medicine cabinets.

So, from all corners of the region, experienced seamstresses and sewing novices and 4-H teenagers pulled out sewing machines, took over spare bedrooms and husbands’ man caves, and set to work.

Their united efforts, stitch by stitch, have provided more than 30,000 handmade masks — made with love by Northeast Michiganders to protect the lungs and lives of front-line workers, vulnerable adults, pharmacists, truckers, barbers, construction workers, moms and dads, journalists, and people from all walks of life, all over the country.

By phone and by email, more than 100 mask-makers from Alpena, Alcona, Montmorency, and Presque Isle counties shared their numbers and told their stories, the warmth of hard work for a good cause laced in between their words.

They told of mornings spent sewing in the basement, nights stitching in front of the evening news.

Some spent weeks or months dedicated to the project — fingers cramping, backs sore from hours hunched over a sewing machine.

Longtime quilters worked methodically through their organized-by-color fabric stashes, pulling out pretty designs they once thought might be used for a baby blanket or comforter.

Others, no carefully folded fabric at the ready, cut up old shirts and began to sew.

Novices, learning on the fly from YouTube videos and helpful neighbors, pulled out sewing machines that had never been out of their boxes and discovered not only the pleasure of making something to help someone else but also a newfound hobby.

Elastic, needed to secure the masks behind the wearer’s ears, was hard to come by, everyone agreed.

Stores ran out. Craft room supplies ran out. Amazon ran out.

Sewers got creative, using ribbons, hair ties, even stretchy strips from old t-shirts or socks.

A plethora of patterns could be found online and through health professionals, and masks of all shapes and fabrics piled up on kitchen tables and were tucked into boxes and bags, ready to be shipped or hung on a neighbor’s doorknob.

Some masks were offered for sale. Others were commissioned by a business, a few dollars per mask helping to pay for the supplies needed to make each mask.

Thousands of other masks were given away, their maker wanting only to keep someone safe.

Donated masks were sent by the twenties and hundreds to local hospitals, nursing homes, and doctor’s offices. Police stations and fire stations. Post offices, pharmacies, and social service agencies.

Other masks sailed south, to downstate agencies and food pantries and health clinics.

They were mailed to Wyoming and Florida, Texas, Idaho and New Jersey, making their way to cover noses and mouths in at least 25 states.

And, one by one, they were given to family, friends, and strangers. A fellow customer, a bank teller, a package delivery person, a mechanic. A few to the local coffee shop, a few more to the dollar store and the recycling plant.

Sewers kept stashes of masks in their cars, posted offers on social media, and spread the word.

Anyone who needed a mask should have one, they said.

From non-sewers came offers of fabric, boxes of ribbon left on a doorstep, warm insistence on paying for a sewer’s supplies at the checkout line at JOANN Fabric.

Some women got together, formed online and in-person groups to sew in an assembly line, churning out masks by the hundreds.

Some worked alone at home, wondering if others were out there sewing, too.

Some mask-makers used a medical-grade fabric with a moisture-proof barrier. Many chose pretty florals, team spirit gear, and fun prints, hoping to ease the burden of mask-wearing by at least allowing the wearer to make a fashion statement.

Some made matching bandanas for pets, selling the sets as a fundraiser for a local animal shelter.

Some, as they move about in the world, glance at the people they pass at the grocery stores, wondering if the mask the stranger is wearing came from their sewing machine.

Among the mask-makers are a pharmacy technician, a retired nurse, a newly certified nursing assistant. One’s sister works at MediLodge. One sews between trips to take her sister-in-law for cancer treatments. One sews for her daughter-in-law, a nurse who contracted COVID-19.

One started sewing while wintering in Florida, afraid to come home to Michigan herself but mailing all 1,900 masks she made back to her home state.

One retired on March 11, planning to spend the first days of her retirement cleaning cupboards and finishing writing a book. Instead, she spent them trying to save lives.

A group of women is sewing masks for their fellow church members to have ready when in-person services start again.

Others are ready for the further future, keeping a supply on hand in case a second wave of COVID-19 sweeps the state in fall.

As the state begins to reopen and people breathe a little easier, some mask-makers have stopped sewing, giving weary fingers a break. Others are still at it, measuring and cutting and pinning and ironing to the rhythm of the sewing machine’s whirr for hours every day.

They sew because they want to help, they said. They want to protect people. They love their community and want to help it be safe.

They sew because it’s something they can do, so they do it.

They don’t want recognition, these women at their sewing machines who blushed and ducked and gave strict orders that a reporter make no fuss about them, because, they said, they are just doing their little part, one mask at a time.

Together — one mask at a time — Laurie and Barb and Yvonne, Tracie and Donna, Salina and Judy and Deb, and so many other Northeast Michiganders with big hearts and busy hands, created at least 31,670 new weapons against a war they are determined to win.

And that, as one sewer pointed out, is only the tip of the iceberg.

Stories and numbers from 100 area women probably represent only a fraction of the people in our corner of the state who are making masks, only a fraction of the masks that have been made.

“It makes me teary-eyed to think how many women just stopped everything and said, ‘We’ve got to do this, and we have to do this now,'” said Alpena mask-maker Tina Mumford. “We put all of our passion, all of our love, our hearts, our prayers, in every little stitch.”

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

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