Distancing Day 19: Masks!

Oh my heavens I am EXHAUSTED.

And the hubby is, too!!

We’ve been consistently staying up far too late, with a bedtime well past midnight, but there is just a LOT to fit into our days! (As with oodles of peeps the world over!) His work is insane at the moment, the kiddos are a lot to handle in addition to their school work, we’ve been busting out every project imaginable, and there’s just never ending food prep and clean-up.

But...I have a few lovely tidbits to post, and might even do a second one tonight if I can work up the energy, but for now, I wanted to share a very, VERY rare event:

The busting out of my SEWING MACHINE (that has probably only been used three or four times in 15 years, ha). And if that’s not worthy of a post, I don’t what is!!

To end the suspense (though I’m pretty sure there is none), heeeere’s what I’ve been up to:

Face masks!

So...the backstory is this: a woman within our neighborhood heads up a charity that has committed to making and donating more than 3,000 face masks to a handful of our local hospitals. 

Fantastic, yes?? She was on it, quite early in this process. More than two weeks ago, she sent word to all of us neighborhood ladies, and we gladly chipped in, cutting fabric and elastic (any that was still available through the crafting stores), in order to assemble kits of materials (that equate to six completed masks) to be placed in bins in front of our neighborhood, and several others nearby.

It was a bit of a harried process that day, as everybody was kind of in frantic mode. I even had Nanna and the girlies involved in the assembly line.





Thankfully, things have calmed down to a bit more of an orderly pace, and the bins are replenished regularly, and people appear to be grabbing the kits regularly to make the masks, and return them for donation. A wonderful, giving cycle.

That said...I was still committed to actually sewing some of the masks, and I’d made a couple decent ones via hand-stitching, which was fine and dandy, but quite time consuming.

So finally, I relented and dug the good old sewing machine out of the attic so I could maximize my output in the little time I have to knock some out.



I’m so thrilled to report that I don’t regret the decision!

Yes, it was annoying to familiarize myself with the machine.

And, yes, I made some hysterical errors, and a couple of badly botched face masks.

But...I eventually got in a groove and finished the kit I’d committed to, and I’m not gonna lie: I was immensely proud that I managed to pull it off!

I was grateful to be able to riffle through my own personal stash of old fabric and elastic, as it was better quality than the thin weave material that was all that was left when the charity was buying in hoards from Hobby Lobby. And they turned out pretty cute!

In addition to the ones I donated, I made a couple for the hubby and I (he wore his fashionable one today, during his once-a-week grocery run for us), and I’ll be making some smaller ones for the kiddos mañana.







Really grateful to have figured these out and gotten over myself in regards to the sewing machine.

And I must be a glutton for punishment (or maybe just trying to be a decent human and help out), because I snagged another kit to complete several more masks this weekend, and I’ll probably continue to do so every few days moving forward, as long as there is still fabric and elastic available in the neighborhood bins. 

Thus far, the peeps of our little community of three or four neighborhoods have completed over 2,000 masks, and that makes me so dang proud and happy. And it’s a really lovely light of positivity to focus on in these strange days. 

I hope everyone is SO READY for the slight change of pace of a weekend versus weekday. I know I am!

And I hope everyone is staying healthy and (relatively) sane.

Over and out, m’peeps!