Fairhaven Woman Volunteers Time to Sew Medical Masks

A Fairhaven woman has been spending her free time in a very meaningful way in this time of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Debi Bell works for a healthcare software company. She was asked by her company to start working remotely about a week and a half ago. Debi says that she is amino compromised, a condition that weakens her immunity from infectious diseases, and therefore has been spending almost all of her time at home. She saw the need for medical masks on the CDC website, so she out herself to work.

Bell begins sewing the masks for healthcare providers when she stops her regular job at three o'clock each afternoon. "I cut them out, I sew them, put the elastic on them and topstitch them," Bell told the Rock and Fox Show.

It takes Bell about 20 minutes to make each mask, but she works in an assembly line fashion. She'll cut them all, then sew them all, etc. By the end of a couple of hours, she has a batch of them made.

"I've been pushing myself to do more and more each day because there's been such a need. I ran out of elastic, and I put a plea out onto Facebook," she said. "The response was overwhelming. I probably received about 300 yards of elastic in the past two days."

Packages of fabric and other materials have been showing up on her doorstep as donations from the community.

Debi told us healthcare providers from as far away as New Hampshire have been reaching out to her looking for masks because they just don't have the supplies at work.

People who are interested in donating elastics and other materials to Debi can reach out to her on her Facebook page.