Henry Rifle Forums

My daughter-in-law is a wonderful seamstress and bored out of her mind with her college classes being suspended. Yesterday I heard through the grapevine that a nurse in Indiana was asking local people who have the gift of sewing to sew medical masks to help with the shortage. We encouraged our daughter-in-law to check with our local clinic/hospital and sure enough, the people that she talked to said absolutely. She is setting up her operation today, and my wife and daughters are excited to join in once she gets everything figured out. Hopefully it all works out because its a win for everybody.
If you, or someone that you know is good at sewing, (and bored) maybe contact your local clinic, hospital and see if it is something that would work out. I don't know any of the details but as it unfolds I'll try to post an update.

this sounds great, please do update often .... our oldest son is a Doctor and his practice is very short of mask .... his wife put a note on Facebook asking anyone with extras to donate .... one person asked about making some and when she researched it, she learned that only commercial mask from approved sources are allowed here .... with the need increasing, I can see the possibility of that changing

This is an interesting subject and one I have been concerned with.

Great to see people out there contributing their time and talents.

Very needed service your dtr-in-law is doing. Definite thumbs up for being proactive and helpful. And as mentioned, even if not the very best and/or approved medically efficient mask, might just prove important as another backup source. Glad you shared this post.

Wonderful of your daughter to help out in this way! I personally thank her!!

Great idea Greyhawk. What are they using for the pattern to make these and material.

BigAl52 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 23, 2020 12:17 pm

Great idea Greyhawk. What are they using for the pattern to make these and material.

As I understand there is a hospital in Indiana who has a pattern/design that is approved by the CDC for many medical procedures. These 'homemade' masks are not approved for infectious disease, but are approved for many other applications, freeing up the approved masks for the infectious disease patients. This is really growing across Minnesota, and clinics, hospitals, and seamstresses are getting on board, in fact they were just talking about it on Minnesota Public Radio today.

One local small business example (there are many out there helping) ...

Portland Garment Factory....Typically pushes out garments and soft fabric items for companies like Nike and Apple. Now they are making medical masks and gowns to help meet the need.

I haven't seen it in the news anywhere yet. Supposedly Nike has been able to convert some of their local sewing machines to do likewise.

Hospitals here are accepting made masks for general purpose use and reserving manufactured N95 masks for those working in isolation wards.

https://katu.com/news/local/how-to-dona ... s-shortage

Good stories. Nice to hear for sure.

A hospital in Cedar Rapids set up a drop box for the sewn masks over the weekend. On Sunday, they had received an overwhelming number of masks that they had to temporarily shut it down until they could make more room to receive more. I had no idea there were so many sewing machines still Singin"