Regina designer donating cloth masks to seniors homes

At Dean Renwick Design Studios in downtown Regina, fashionable materials and patterns have been put aside in favour of bright quilter’s cotton prints, elastic and a simple mask pattern.

With lessons from his grandfather about volunteering in times of need echoing in his head, Renwick felt compelled to find a way to put his sewing skills to good use in a pandemic.

He quickly learned health-care facilities don’t have any use for regular cloth masks because they don’t provide the right level of protection. Yet he still saw people making masks all around the world.

Dean Renwick displays one of the cloth masks he made to donate to local seniors homes. (Adriana Christianson/980 CJME)

“Then I just thought, ‘Oh my God, what about the seniors living homes? They need help, they need masks (and) we need to get them protected and help our community that way,’ ” Renwick said.

With the supply of medical masks being designated for frontline health-care workers in clinics and hospitals, Renwick and his sister discovered there was a high demand for cloth masks for seniors and their caregivers.

“We woke up one morning and called about five homes and by the end of that five homes, we had an order for 250 masks,” Renwick said.

“So then we realized there’s a real need for this. So that day we put a call out to everybody to help volunteer to bring in their 100 per cent cotton fabrics, bring in elastics, help cut, help make masks, do whatever they can to rise to the occasion and step up and help.”

The response from the community has grown along with demand. Renwick now has up to 30 volunteer home sewers working to fill orders for 600 cloth masks for about seven different seniors homes.

“The beautiful thing is that they are all quite shocked that we’re donating these masks. There’s no cost whatsoever to the homes at all,” Renwick explained. “We are taking donations of $10 from individuals that have contacted us but that goes right back into the pile to pay for material and elastic.”

As donations of material come in, Renwick has altered the design of the masks to fit better over the nose and to make sure different kinds of elastics provide a tight fit.

He explained quilter’s cotton works best because it is tightly woven and they sew it in two layers. Renwick said some people have asked about the possibility of adding filters, but since he can’t order those particular supplies, he is looking at altering the design to include a pocket for someone to add a filter if they can find one.

The list of contributers and home sewers is on the Renwick Masks for YQR Facebook page so people can pass along their thanks and give credit where it is due.

“I want people to go up there and thank all the help that has been coming in, that has been pouring in. I want you to thank them, because this has nothing to do with us here at Renwick. It’s all about our city and the resilience our city has shown and the fact that these people have stepped up to help seniors,” Renwick said.

Renwick has also shared a video tutorial on how to make the masks on YouTube.

On Monday, Canada’s top doctor followed other international health officials by changing the official message to encourage people to wear non-medical masks when they go out in public.

While cloth masks can’t provide the same level of protection, they can help stop the spread of COVID-19 by blocking droplets from people who may be asymptomatic and don’t know they carry the virus.