Virtual Community Phase I - making masks

I have a strong family community of quilters, moms, aunts, and cousins.  We make connections often for a variety of reasons, quilting, gardening, child raising, and crafting are among a few things we all have in common.

Corona Virus has tried to wipe out the community in our communities by making it so we cannot connect in person.  It has cancelled events, including our gun show and my Quilt retreat!  For more than 20 years we have had quilt retreat twice a year with my family.  We all get together and work on projects, and quilt and visit and have block drawings and challenges.  We hold each other up when we need it. We create with and for one another and for others who have a need.

You might recognize some of these pictures from previous blogs, but since we didn't get to go this year - All I have!

Now we have Quarantine quilting communities online doing marvelous show and tell, nurses and responders getting the kudos they have so long deserved, Kitchen quarantine cooking classes online, and an additional plethora of free online classes you can take or participate in.

We are doing things "together - apart" like walking challenges to see who get the most steps in even though we are out of our usual element.  It's still a competition and it's still fun.  It works great as long as I remember to wear my fit bit!

For myself - it is almost business as usual.  I still go to work at the school for now - but there are no kids.  Just Administrative staff.  We are a fun group, but it is just not the same when we don't have kids there.  Then I come home - pretty much like usual - but now no one is freaked out when I don''t leave the house for 10 days except to work.  I have been a shelter in place girl for a long time!

And now we also have a call for the quilters, sewers, and makers to come together and make things other than quilts but for a much higher cause and purpose - masks!  We have been called to make fabric masks that can be used by anyone who needs them, any shape, style, color - it doesn't matter - they need masks.  Masks for Cancer patients and their families, and masks for Senior Centers and employees, as well as those who cannot stay home - those working with our homeless population among the extensive list who will be short of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).  Our nurses and CNA's are calling for them so they can make their PPE last longer.  In this time of uncertainty, this we can do with certainty - we can sew and we can make and in doing so we can help!

My family quilting group has our own facebook page so we can try patterns, compare them and make the best ones.  We share ideas, what works and doesn't, and we share anyone who has expressed a need for the masks.  We share how many we have made and where they have gone or are going.

Prior to the shutdown quarantine here in Alaska one of the cousins (the one who set up the page) was also going around collecting masks from us to distribute where they needed to go.  We just got a new mandate so Im not sure how that will work now - I will be mailing some of mine and depending on how things go - delivering some of the other ones!  Hang them on the door if I have to!

What began long ago as a quilters community has now become a Community of Quilters helping the community that we live in.  Sewing as though lives depend on it - because they do! Doing what we can do, with what we have and what we love!  Together - apart.  Blessed be!

*** Here is a great YouTube video by my cousin Alicia McRoberts with a tutorial to make your own masks!

I also have a printable mask pattern posted on a secondary Wicked Raven post - check it out here:

Virtual Community II - Making the Masks