Thousands of Bellingham residents sew 12,000 masks for workers fighting coronavirus

Editor’s note: This story was updated April 25, 2020, to reflect that the masks are the work of many community groups and add detail about other mask-making groups.

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Thousands of Bellingham residents are assisting frontline healthcare and essential workers by sewing over 12,000 cloth facemasks to be distributed for free to those in need across the city.

The Bellingham Makerspace and five sewing groups have partnered with the Whatcom Unified Command, the county’s disaster response organization, to handle the massive demand for equipment.

According to Mary Elliott, the founder and executive director of the Bellingham Makerspace, the creation of masks happened organically.

“Honestly, there were a number of women around town who just kind of organically saw a need for cloth masks,” Elliott told The Bellingham Herald. “Or a couple of their friends worked in hospitals and had asked (because) they knew that they were sewers. Based on that, about five different sewing groups started making masks, which was great, but they didn’t have a really clear way to go ahead and distribute the masks to the people who actually need it.”

The Whatcom Mask Collective, Assistance League, Whatcom County Community Face Mask Team, Ferndale Washington Mask Making Group and Peace Health Mask Making and COVID-19 Masks are all making masks.

Jennifer Jones of the Whatcom Mask Collective said credit should go to the “hundreds of sewists in our county who heroically answered a call to create homemade masks for our frontline workers, and to our supporters who donated hundreds of yards of fabric, elastic, and supplies to keep the sewing going.”

The Whatcom Mask Collective had made and distributed over 6,000 masks before they collaborated with Makerspace. The group severed their relationship with the group Saturday, April 25, over concerns about fundraising.

The Whatcom County Community Facemask Team has created, sanitized and distributed about 4,000 masks, according to Bonnie Southcott, who co-founded the group with her wife Ellen Harwick.

“When the county ran out of elastic early on in the crisis, a Community Facemask Team member offered to reach out to an L.A. wholesale supplier. With the help of an anonymous donor, we were able to have enough elastic shipped to us to create 20,000 masks. At that point, Makerspace offered to distribute bags holding elastic that our group pre-cut in lengths for 25, 50 and 100 masks,” Southcott said.

Sewists for her group make masks, drop them off at Brio Laundry, pick up the cleaned masks and then drivers drop off the masks to private practices, nursing homes, and essential workers who contact the group requests, she said.

Brio Laundry has been “a generous partner business who is volunteering their services for free. Brio sanitizes the masks using the same techniques and products that the local hospital uses. They bag each mask individually in plastic,” Southcott said.

“We do not ask for donations and we don’t accept donations. This is an effort by our community to support those on the frontlines and everyone is donating their time, effort and material. Brio Laundry did not receive any donations,” Southcott said.

Makerspace created a Google spreadsheet to organize how many masks are available and who needs one that several of the groups used.

“What’s wonderful about that is that if anyone does need a mask, there’s one form, we just give them a link to that form and they can fill that out,” Elliott said. “At the moment, now they can ask for a cloth mask, or they can ask for one of the rigid face shields, or they can ask for a procedure gown that’s made out of Tyvek.”

According to Elliott, donations are being accepted by the Makerspace to purchase material to produce the rigid face shields and Tyvek gowns. The materials being purchased to make the face shields and gowns include Tyvek, tape, razor blades, plywood and elastic.

The group’s initial goal, to supply employees at St. Joseph hospital with protective equipment, was quickly achieved. Now the group is focused on supplying other health care providers as well as essential businesses with as many masks as are needed before assisting the general public.

“Since the CDC has made that recommendation that you know, really everyone should go out with face covering,” Elliott said. “(We) want to try and go ahead and meet that need as well. But at the moment we’re focusing on the essential workers.”

The Whatcom Unified Command released a statement Wednesday, April 22, encouraging all mask makers to donate to receptacles around the county so it can properly collect, sanitize and distribute masks to those in need.

However, according to Elliott, the announcement will not affect the distribution from the Makerspace — for now. The group still has a long list of people in need on their spreadsheet that they plan to distribute to, before connecting and reassessing with the unified command on Monday, April 27.

This story was originally published April 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.