With COVID-19 affecting the entire country, our hospitals are in desperate need of face masks. We need to make sure that all the staff at the hospitals have face masks. Our goal is to produce enough washable masks for each supporting staff member to have multiple pairs that they can cycle through. Your volunteer help will make a difference.
Learn moreWe are organizing efforts in the Akron area to make and supply face masks to the supporting staff members in Akron hospitals. By utilizing donated materials and coordinating efforts from the local Akron community, we are making this possible. We already have a lot of momentum and need your help to keep this moving forward. Time is not on our side, so we're counting on the people of Akron to help us mask our heroes.
THIS IS NOT FOR PROFIT. THIS IS TO HELP OUR HEROES IN THE HOSPITALS.
"Joann has donated several hundred reams of fabric and hundreds of spools of sewing thread. We will be utilizing this material to produce the face masks."
Thanks to the wonderful people at Murdock Industrial, a volunteer employee of theirs is using a 35 ton die press to punch the mask pattern out of fabric. We are able to do this reams at a time. We have already punched out 70,000 pieces of the original 6" x 9" pattern from fabric for Akron Children's Hospital and Aultman Hospital. Next we will be punching out the 8" x 9" pattern for Akron Children's.
"We have a small team of volunteer drivers that help us deliver mask kits to sewers within a 30 minute driving radius of downtown Akron. We need more drivers so we can extend our delivery reach."
Our drivers pick up the mask kits from Murdock Industrial in Akron. They then deliver them to the volunteer sewers and notify them when the box is on their porch. After the sewers have finished making masks they contact the driver for a pick up. The driver then brings them back to Murdock Industrial where they are counted, boxed up, and donated.
"Sewing the masks is the most time consuming part of the process. We are working with one business already that is fitted with automated sewing machines. Akron Children's Hospital alone needs 15,000 of these, so we will need all the help we can get in order to produce these fast enough."
The instructions we were provided with by Akron Children's Hospital gives our sewers the step by step directions of how these masks are to be assembled. We will be providing the cut face mask materials, spools of thread, ties, and bias tape. Joann Fabrics will be providing as much material as they possibly can, but we will no doubt be in need of materials that are currently in short supply. For example, we will need more bias tape and ties so if you have supplies and are willing to donate, please contact us. We will need all the help we can get!
"Our biggest bottle neck right now is with making the face mask ties. There's a massive shortage of bias tape and we simply don't have enough to produce the masks. Each mask requires four 20 in ties. For these 15,000 masks we will need we need a total of 33,334 yards of bias tape. We were able to acquire the uncut material from Joann's but National Bias Fabric won't be able to cut it in mass until next week."
So in the meantime, we are looking for assistance with cutting and making bias tape. We can provide the twill fabric to make it, as Joann's was generous in giving us 25 spools of 80 yards. We are also welcoming donations from people who have bias tape or would like to order it. We're looking for 1/4", 3/8", and nothing wider than 1/2". If you have bias tape at home please contact Kevin from the contact page and we will send someone out to get it. If you are purchasing bias tape online please be aware that sometime next week we can get our material cut. So if a shipment doesn't have an estimated delivery by April 15 or 16 it's not within our need window. You can send all shipments to Murdock Industrial at 553 Carroll St. Akron, Oh 44304. Thank you to all those that participate and support our sewers!
"Once we've collected the finished face masks from the sewers, our team will be boxing them up to deliver to area hospitals. We are supplying Akron Children's Hospital first and then moving forward to other hospitals from there."
Home Depot has been kind enough to donate as many boxes as they can. We think they will last us through the week but will need more in the future. Once we've got the masks boxed up, they will be delivered to the hospitals in bulk for sanitization and then distribution amongst the staff. If you are able to donate boxes please contact us to help support our heroes in the hospitals.
We currently have enough materials.
With the flood of new sewers we are now in need of additional drivers to facilitate the increase in deliveries.
We could also use assistance with boxing up mask kits and coordinate drivers with sewers.
We need help sewing masks so if you are an individual that can sew please sign up. If you're a business that can assist please contact us.
We need a volunteer that is tech savvy enough to help us coordinate drivers & sewers off of the Google Sheet we have setup. This could be done remotely.
