By Marnie Craig
Korenda Schultz of Stevensville started sewing face masks last week and hasn’t stopped. Her business, Bags-N-Packs Embroidery, slowed due to the coronavirus and she wanted to help. Reading about the global shortage of face masks she reached out last Wednesday in an online forum held by Senator Jon Tester, Schultz asked which hospitals in Montana needed masks.
The one person to respond was a nurse from Mississippi asking if she could sew masks for her hospice. The nurse sent a link for a pattern and Schultz reached out to her fellow church members for help. By Monday they had 160 masks to send to the hospice in Mississippi. The nurse sent 100 of those to a hospital in New Orleans and Schultz and her friends made her 100 more.
As word spread, the Stevensville Fire Department and local doctors asked Schultz for masks. “I already make custom bags for the fire department so one of the fire chiefs asked if I could make 30 masks for his engines,” she said. “The people who worked for him came in, got a pattern and learned how to make them and now they are making their own.”
Schultz is both making masks and supplying others with what they need to make the masks at home. She is handing out kits of 50 at time.
“I made over five different styles of masks and finally decided to stick to one style, the Deaconess style mask,” she said. “It is the fastest to make. I changed the size from 6-by-9-inch to 6.5-by-9-inch so they can fit over other masks if needed. These masks won’t protect anyone from coronavirus, they will be worn by the healthcare people who aren’t dealing with the virus so the PPE masks can go to the healthcare workers on the front lines.”
Schultz is currently sending 375 masks to a veterans hospital in Florida. She has an order for 500 masks for an Ohio hospital, 400 for Louisiana hospitals and the calls keep coming in. She just got an order from St. Pat’s Hospital in Missoula. Schultz has six women sewing and cutting masks from home. But they need help. It is more than they can do on their own. They also need supplies.
They need cotton quilting fabric and 1/8” or 1/4” elastic or single fold base tape, but she doesn’t have room to store bolts of fabric. Ideally, she would like people to make the Deaconess masks at home with their own supplies and deliver the finished masks to her for distribution. Masks for children are also needed. “If you can’t sew you can cut fabric,” she said. “Any help is welcome as long as the need is there.”
If you can cut or sew, or if you have fabric and elastic to donate, contact Schultz at 406-777-3384, or email korenda@bagsnpacksembroidery.com.
This is the link to how to make the masks: https://www.deaconess.com/How-to-make-a-Face-Mask