By Emily Williams
The hot new accessory for summer, fall and beyond is undoubtedly the mask.
While some people opt for a simple paper mask, stores throughout the Over the Mountain area have equipped themselves with more fashionable options, allowing wearers to coordinate with their outfits and express themselves while hiding their own expressions and remaining healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the Assistance League’s PrimeTime Treasures storefront on Oxmoor Road in Homewood, Robin Johnson’s hand-sewn masks are piquing the interest of shoppers.
While the store was closed at the beginning of the pandemic, Johnson was busy honing her new craft. She joined a Facebook group devoted to enlisting the help of local sewers to make masks for health care workers when PPE was scarce.
“We were making the homemade washable ones so (nurses, doctors and such) would never have to wear their medical masks outside of surgery or any other situation that called for real medical masks,” she said.
Johnson was able to speak with one of the nurses for whom she made masks, who worked in the COVID-19 unit at UAB and told her the hospital required hospital staff to wear masks every second they were on campus. With the help of local sewers, they could wear their medical PPE while working and switch to a washable, hand-sewn mask when leaving or entering the hospital.
“I started on April 2,” Johnson said, adding that she donated about 500 masks before PPE supplies were restored.
Gaining Popularity
Just as the need for mask donations began to dwindle, Johnson noticed in June that sales of her handmade dog bandanas picked up at the newly reopened PrimeTime Treasures.
“I called them and asked them why, all of a sudden, did my dog bandanas start selling; and she said that people were buying them for masks,” she said.
Eventually, shoppers began asking for actual masks, and Johnson was happy to oblige as she had a huge amount of leftover materials from her donation work.
“I liked being able to sell them at the store because it gives me a little money, but it also gives them money too,” Johnson said. Giving back with her gift of sewing continues to be important to her.
PrimeTime Treasures is one of three Assistance League projects. It seeks to offer senior citizens a place to sell their crafts and supplement their incomes. In addition, the retail space hosts the Encore thrift store, which raises funds for Operation School Bell. That program provides new clothes to underserved elementary school children in the Birmingham area.
At first, Johnson thought that she would sell a bunch of masks in the first month and then people wouldn’t come back for more. She was wrong.
“I sold as much in June as I did in July,” she said.
She was commissioned to make a mask of every single color she had so the buyer could coordinate with her outfits each day.
“So, I thought maybe the shop would want those, too,” she said. “Maybe someone else is thinking about that. So, I did that, I gave them two of every color I have.”
She made solid-colored masks in case schools required students to wear those. Some have, she said, but most have opted to tell students simply that their masks should be tasteful if they are patterned.
“Most people want one that has something to do with them,” she said. “They want dogs, cats or flowers.”
It has called her to become creative, especially when designing masks for men.
She has some Marvel fabric for comic book and superhero fans, a space theme and a map scene. There are also masks for men that feature buffalo plaid. Some are plain, some have paw prints and some have deer heads.
“The most I have sold of any one design, it has been Alabama,” she said. “And Auburn is a very close second.”
The outlet to sell her work has been much needed for Johnson, who typically sells some of her products at local craft shows, all of which have been cancelled for the remainder of the year.
“I was really glad, and I still am, to have something to do,” she said. “When it was so important for us to crank (masks) out as fast as we could, that was pretty stressful for me. I don’t work well under that kind of pressure when I’m sewing, so I’m enjoying it a lot more now by doing it for the shop, because there is no number commitment. It’s entirely up to me.”
