Shorewood Woman Creates Group, Makes More Than 2,500 Masks

SHOREWOOD, IL — Lois Nelson is familiar with the concept of too much of a good thing. Back when the wildfires ravaged Australia, she decided to help out. As a quilter, sewing is her passion and she knew she could help.

“They asked people to make certain kinds of items for the animals who were injured or damaged in Australia,” she said.

She began by cutting out a bat wrap. A bat wrap simulates a mother's wings and are used to wrap injured and orphaned bats so they feel safe. The bat wrap Nelson started making never made it to Australia.

“After I had the first one cut, there was a planet-wide stop,” she said.

People had been so responsive and sending so many items that Australian officials asked people to stop because they were overwhelmed trying to sort them.

“I hadn’t sewn the bat wrap, but I had cut it,” she said.

She chose at that point to finish the wrap and donate it locally — to the DuPage County Forest Preserve.

This lesson served her well when it came to the demand for masks.

“I saw that an Indiana hospital had made a request to make masks,” she said.

But she knew that by the time that she began making masks, the people requesting them would likely have had enough donations. So, she decided to start local. Nelson’s daughter is an EMS call taker who lives out of town.

“The first one I made was for her,” Nelson said. “And I said what about your coworkers?”

Nelson started before Illinois was under a stay-at-home rule.

“I did them right away,” she said. “I looked at the pattern and thought, ‘I can do that.’”

Because Nelson is a quilter, she had all the supplies needed to make masks, and she had the forethought to purchase more while she still could. She specifically knew she was going to need more elastic. First she went online and noticed that the local fabric store was running low already. So she drove over there. Instead of buying the prepackaged elastic, she asked if they had any for sale by the yard. They did.

“It was 43 yards, so I bought it all,” she said. “I did not buy it to hoard it, I bought it to cut it into 7-inch strips. I thought hey, ‘we can make masks for medical people.’”

Nelson also knew that there were a lot of other people who sewed or quilted who would also want to help out. So she went to the Next Door app and posted. She now has about 14 people who are sewing or helping her to deliver masks or supplies.

Nelson said the skill levels range from women in their 70s and 80s who are brushing up on their home economics skills from the 1950s to professional seamstresses. And while she assembled people who were sewing masks, she also connected to people willing to volunteer to deliver the items and organizations who were in need of the masks.

Frederick Guerra found Nelson on the Nextdoor app. A retired postal worker, he had a natural talent he could lend to the cause.

“She gives me, if she wants a pick up or delivery, I ask her for the addresses so I can create the most direct route to go to each one,” Guerra said. “Usually it’s three or four or five people that she wants dropped off.”

Nelson has also created a no-touch process. Once the masks are completed, other sewers can place them in a bin in front of her home. She puts them together in groups to be delivered to the organizations that need them based on her own process. When they are put together, she puts them back in the bin in front of her home for a deliverer like Guerra to take to the organization that needs them.

I don’t come in contact with anybody,” Guerra said. “Lois has got a tub outside her garage door.
“I’ve got nothing but accolades for her. She does a marvelous job.”

Nelson said that her system has created about 2,558 masks. But the community is in need of more than 4,400.

“I’d say 95 percent of the masks went back out locally,” Nelson said. “We’ve done some in patient mental health programs, in patient addiction programs.”

Plainfield Police Chief John Konopek said the ones delivered to his department were needed.

“She's made about 50 for us," he said.

The department is beginning to see the orders for N95 masks start to be shipped, so their need for a temporary solution is less urgent.

"It really came in helpful when all this started," Konopek said.

The masks made by Nelson's group gave officers masks when there were no other options. Konopek said pretty much every officer in the department is currently working the streets.

Having a number of people in the community come forward with masks is just the tip of the iceberg in the sense of community that Konopek said he has seen since coronavirus began.

"Since this whole crisis started, we've had people contacting us to see what we need," Konopek said. "In the last 26 years I have been here, we always have people who want to step up and help out."

To get in touch with Nelson, with an organization in need or masks or to make a donation of supplies, email her at lois.nelson@sbcglobal.net.