Sew tight: Local women make masks for manufacturing neighbor

Gwenda Mullins, Hilda Wise, and Judy Abbott have a little cottage industry going in their Bremen-area homes, making masks at no charge for those that need them. This week, they fulfilled their biggest order, sewing masks for the 125 employees at HH Technologies in Bremen.

Lesley Jenkins, vice president of operations at the plant, said he had already reached out to HomTex about ordering masks for HH Technologies employees when another employee reached out to Mullins.

Mullins, a seamstress since age six, began making masks as a way of helping during the COVID-19 pandemic. She sent 20 masks to her nephew in the Army; he asked for 20 more. Then she made masks for her niece, who is at a Naval base in Virginia. “I was just making them for different people, especially in the medical field,” she said.

Then Mullins heard HH Technologies needed masks. In order to make so many masks, she teamed up with sisters Hilda Wise and Judy Abbott, who had also been making masks. “I called them and they were ready to go ,and we just all sewed together,” she said.

Getting materials was not an issue, said Mullins, thanks to Wise. “Her whole basement, it’s all set up for sewing,” said Mullins. “It’s like a fabric store, anything you want, it’s in there.”

They did eventually run out of elastic at one point, but cut up white t-shirts into strips. “You pull it and it curls up a bit,” said Mullins.

“It kind of felt like the old war time when the women stepped in and started working,” she laughed. “We have enjoyed every moment of it. It’s been a blessing, really, to do these things for the people out there who really needed them.”

Working in an assembly-line manner, the trio finished the 120 masks in about a day and half. Each mask takes about seven to eight minutes to make, she said.

Jenkins offered them payment or a donation in their honor in gratitude, but the ladies declined the offer. “They said, ‘no way, that’s not what we’re doing this for,’” he said. “They’re the unspoken heroes across the country.”

The company makes rolling fabric doors for the cooling industry and also manufactures ambulance and fire engine harnesses, which meant the company needed to keep operating to supply those industries. “We immediately started changing our manufacturing facility around to make sure that we were able to fight against the virus and keep our employees safe,” he said.

Part of keeping them safe is making sure they have masks to wear if they want. “We’re not going to mandate that they wear them right now, but we want to have them in case they want to,” he said.

“It’s heart warming,” he said. “For them to want to take care and keep our employees safe, it means the world to us. We also want to thank our employees for all their hard work and dedication through this. They have been great in what people keep calling the new normal!”

The Bremen area is a close-knit community. “Being in a smaller community and to have 125 employees, just about everybody here knows everybody,” said Jenkins. In fact, he went to school with Mullins’ daughter, and Mullins said she’s known him since he was in first grade.

“You just want to help all these people around here, and knowing they’ve got a job they can go to and they’re social distancing, we’ll just do what we can,” said Mullins. “If more people call, we’re ready to do some more.”