Alberta grandmother turns quilting scraps into face masks for charity

Carma Anderson turned 88 in May, during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Isolating at her Barnwell home, the grandmother decided to get busy on some face masks to send to family members scattered far and wide, using leftover fabric from her many quilting projects.

That was 1,000 masks ago.

"Grandma Carma's Masks" have been shipped to friends and family as far away as Phoenix, Ariz., and distributed throughout Alberta.

"I can't believe it myself because I never thought I'd make more than 50, and I'm still enthused about making them," Anderson told The Homestretch.

Anderson says it started when she heard on the news that there was a shortage of masks.

"And I thought, 'Oh my goodness, we're going to probably need some here,' and I have children in the States and they're going to need them."

Anderson found a pattern online and set to work on the folded cotton masks, which take about 35 minutes each to make.

"I have three families here in Barnwell, Taber area and they're all involved with other people, and so I'd made masks for them. And then their grandchildren wanted one for their friend, and then I did some for my neighbours, and then it just started spreading," Anderson said.

All proceeds to charity

She sells the masks for $3.50 each and is donating all proceeds to charity.

"Any charity that I feel like could use it, or food bank or whatever," she said.

At first, Anderson didn't want to charge anything, but as word got out, more and more people made requests, and others donated fabric.

"I did a lot of quilting, I still do a lot of quilting, so I had lots of scraps of fabric," she said. "That's what started it, was using up this fabric that I knew my kids wouldn't know what to do with, when I was gone — and I wanted to get it used up."

She has, however, spend a bit of money on elastic.

'Elastic, we've bought yards and yards," she said. "I get 30 yards, and pretty soon I'm saying 'Lindsay, pick me up another 40 yards.'"

"Grandma Carma's" sewing enterprise has kept daughter-in-law Lindsay Anderson busy packaging up sets of fabric masks and posting them for sale on Facebook. 

"Grandma keeps apologizing for all the work she is causing me," Anderson wrote in an email to CBC. "But this venture of hers has provided some great perks for me: catching up with old and new friends who are picking up masks has been a highlight of COVID-19 for me as I've enjoyed the face-to-face interactions and opportunities for some distanced doorstep visits."

Anderson says she has never been able to just sit and watch TV.  

"I love to sew in the mornings," she said. "I like watching news and whatnot in the evenings and so I do that cutting out, and the pinning together in the evenings. I'm always busy with my hands with something, so that's how it's gone."

Lately, she says, there have been requests for masks with a little more room to breathe, and many for children, as parents prepare for back to school. 

Anderson says she also spends a lot of time taking care of her large yard, and takes days off to spend time with her family — she is the mother of six, grandmother to 24 and great-grandmother to 21.

She says the whole project has helped her get through the isolation of the pandemic.

"I was always out and about before, but I wasn't going anywhere, to the grocery store. My children were making sure I stayed away from anything, and getting my mail, and so this was great."

'A social bit'

Anderson says she enjoyed the human interaction of giving people the masks, even from a safe distance. 

"There are a few who had come, and they would stay outside, and I would show them the masks from the door, and toss them one. For a while there we would just toss it to them. And so there was a social bit for me as well to have that interaction with other people."

She says most of her masks are now displayed online by her daughter-in-law, who also handles safe distribution.

Anderson says she has no plans to stop making her masks.

"It's unreal," she said. "It's fun to know that I can just keep giving."

With files from The Homestretch.