Valley Views: Giving back with face masks

This is my sixth week of sheltering in place, and on my neighborhood walks it is easy to keep a safe distance from others. But as the virus continues, it seems inevitable that I will need a mask or two as we slowly resume venturing into public places.

So I reached into the back of my kitchen drawer for a 100% cotton, tightly woven little towel that I thought would do the stitch-free trick I saw on a video. A few folds, a couple rubber hair bands and voila! Except not. The creation did not morph into a mask as shown: It did not stay around my ears, and it did not stay folded. (Otherwise it was fine.)

I am not a seamstress but I did recently sew some basic covers to protect my dining room chairs from the grandchildren, so I dug out the leftover material and began to take measurements of my face.

Luckily just then my friend Pat called. She is a retired first-grade teacher and has sewn all her life, for herself, her kids and grandkids. She said she’s been busy using her 40-plus years of leftover material to make facemasks for anyone who needs them and she put a couple in the mail for me.

Now I am hearing about many home seamstresses who are providing masks for family and friends, as well as for health workers and others performing essential services.

Linda Perricone, who lives in Pleasanton, told me Wednesday that so far she had produced 350 masks. She started out making them for doctors and nurses at Kaiser in Hayward when she heard about its shortage from a neighbor who works there.

Linda got wind early on that we might need masks, after she talked in January with a friend who had just been to China. A member of Amador Valley Quilters, she had decades of material on hand, including dense quilter’s cotton; her husband Ed researched online for a mask pattern, locating one at Maker’s Habitat KL in Malaysia. This was before patterns were available at Joann Fabric and local quilting shops, Linda explained.

Linda and Ed, a retired San Francisco firefighter, have been married and working as a team for 54 years, she said, and now Ed orders what they need and cuts the material and elastic while she does the sewing. This includes vacuum cleaner bags for an extra filter.

She includes three layers of material, and said she likes to use cloth with designs that make people smile. Dogs and cats are quite popular. Her favorite batch had cats on one side and little mice on the other. She also changed to wrap-around elastic straps after nurses said their ears were becoming chafed.

The Perricones have sent masks to hospitals in Los Angeles and in Santa Rosa, where their daughter is a psychologist. Sometimes Linda gets tired, she said, but when she sees the exhausted doctors and other medical personnel on television, she realizes that she can keep working, too.

She noted that she can’t go to the grocery store anyway, and she has a beautiful sewing room with a view of all the neighbors out walking and riding by on their bikes. Linda and Ed were already walkers, and they continue to take a long walk each day with their terrier Max.

When Linda heard about a restaurant that needed 60 masks for its employees making deliveries, she sewed them in two days, but now she has decided that 10 a day is a good number. This week, she was working on masks for Ridgeview Commons, which put out a cry for 250 for its seniors.

Another Pleasanton quilter, Jeanne Brophy, said a lot of her quilting/mask-making friends are dropping their creations in a box in front of her home for distribution. She estimated a thousand have gone through, including many to Kaiser facilities, to a rehab facility in Danville, two senior care facilities in Livermore, some to Axis Community Health and to Senior Support Program of the Tri-Valley.

She also made masks for workers at Roche, who are developing a test for COVID-19. Some people insist on donating money to help defray the expense but Jeanne said what she loved most was receiving a handmade card.

Both Linda and Jeanne said they were pleased to be doing something to help out during this time. This is one more way we’ve come together as we stay apart.

Editor’s note: Dolores Fox Ciardelli is Tri-Valley Life editor for the Pleasanton Weekly. Her column, “Valley Views,” runs on the second and fourth Fridays of the month.

Editor’s note: Dolores Fox Ciardelli is Tri-Valley Life editor for the Pleasanton Weekly. Her column, “Valley Views,” runs on the second and fourth Fridays of the month.

Editor’s note: Dolores Fox Ciardelli is Tri-Valley Life editor for the Pleasanton Weekly. Her column, “Valley Views,” runs on the second and fourth Fridays of the month.

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