I have been powering through some homemade masks. I feel utterly ridiculous doing it, but only because it seems utterly ridiculous that we are so incredibly under-prepared as a country but that's a whole other conversation. A nurse friend of mine I've been making them for reminded me that these masks need to fit over people's noses to give them some sort of protection. At first I was thinking pipe cleaner, or other thing metal but she reminded me since these are supposed to be reusable and washable if they put pipe cleaners through the wash they will start to rust. Finally, after discussing this problem with my mother she came up with a good alternative if you do not have any nose bridges for your homemade masks. If you buy bags of coffee to make at home you'll no doubt have some of those big twist ties as seen below:
These things are perfect, they fit well over someone's nose, will bend and stay and won't rust when washed since they are plastic coated. So now you can help in the pandemic and recycle/reuse old materials. Although the plastic between the two strands of metal is pretty thin and I've accidentally been putting my needle through it a couple times I've been trying to just sew around the strips like so:
My mother put out a call to our community through FB and people have been bringing me their spare twist ties for a couple days now. Although I doubt any of them will read this thank you! Although it's truly the first responders doing the hard work it's nice to see us coming together to do small little things to support them.
Another day, another dozen masks:
