Grinter Quilters assist by sewing face masks

The Grinter Quilters are assisting with fighting COVID-19 by making face masks while they are at home.

According to Lezlie Brillhart, president of the Grinter Quilters, about six members of the organization are working individually at home and have provided hundreds of the face masks to local residents and organizations. She only recently started helping with the effort, she added, and has made about 30 masks herself.

Recently, the CDC recommended face masks for those who are going out. Wyandotte County and Kansas are currently under stay-at-home orders.

Some of the masks have been given to health clinics, neighbors and organizations, she said. Others have gone to churches, gyms and organizations that are not currently meeting but are waiting for the stay-at-home orders to end. A hospital didn’t need the homemade masks, she said, since they have masks that are made to medical specifications.

All the meetings at Grinter Place have been canceled because of the “stay-at-home” order, and at this time of the year, the Grinter Quilters would usually have been working on a number of quilts at Grinter Place.

The annual Grinter Quilt Show in the last week of April had to be canceled, she said, and now the Grinter Quilters are waiting to see if it can be rescheduled later in the year.

“The masks are not that difficult to make,” Brillhart said. There are not too many connections between sewing quilts and sewing masks, she added. “The only thing to say is we all have sewing machines. This is a project we can do at our homes.”

She said as quilters, they always have a lot of scraps of material left over that can be used for masks.

She said she hopes their efforts help people.

“I understand masks are pretty much mandatory for people, and a lot don’t know where to go. They can’t go out and shop for them,” she said.

It is nice to be able to do something at this time, she said.

“We’re just sitting at home, too,” she said.