Masks for a healthy community.

If you are grateful for a mask I made or for the tutorials available on my website, please consider making a donation to the NEV Community Development Project. A strong healthy community is the best we can wish for in uncertain times. Thank you so much.

I was seriously considering building a side hustle around my Silent QUEEN sewing blog and was in the process of doing so, when lockdown happened. So instead of making bags, lavender sachets, potpourris and assembling sewing kits to sell, I started making masks.

I made masks for my friends and family. I made masks for the people who asked me. Then my masks went to the local chemist and were donated to people who came for their flu vaccine. I then made more to be donated through our informal group Masks4AllOtago. Lockdown was basically for me : a mask-making marathon.

I stopped counting how many I made and added my efforts to the management of the Masks4AllOtago group.

I thought teaching more people how to make masks was important. We need more makers. And I am a teacher after all. So I put together several tutorials that can be found on my website and I created a private Facebook group to support people who want to learn how to make masks. Creating these tutorials was certainly more demanding for my brain than mask-making !

Then the government recommended mask-wearing… and a tsunami of people started to look for masks to buy.

I didn't want to sell my masks, it simply felt wrong. So I explored the option of maybe asking for donations to cover my expenses. This didn’t sit well with me either.

This morning when I woke up, I knew that asking for donations for the North East Valley Community Development Project was the right way to go. Having been the community worker for the organisation a few years back, I know that the Project works tirelessly to help build a better future for all people in the area.

A better future for all people. Right where I live.