00:00I think as a small business owner, it was just so tough. At the beginning, you're kind of looking at
00:05this big thing you've spent like years and years building and thinking like, is this going to be the end
00:10of it?
00:11Hi, I'm Caitlin from Street and Saddle and I'm here with Refinery29. I'm going to talk about the ways you
00:17can make the most out of your skills and network to help your community during these trying times.
00:22So I kind of decided to just take things day by day and we kind of change and pivot and
00:29alter. Yes, Street and Saddle is still here for clothing, but we are here with masks. We're here with headbands.
00:37We're here with donations. Just trying to be here as much as we can for the community, I think helped
00:43me get through this a lot better personally.
00:47I've been sewing for my friends, my family, my customers, and I've also been donating them through WeNeedMasks.org, which
00:56is a really great organization that has a running list of facilities that really need these fabric masks, how many
01:03they need, what type, and they also are updating it as people are donating to keep track of how many
01:10each one needs.
01:11If you are wanting to help out your community during this time, I think you'd be surprised at how many
01:17skills can be applicable for helping everyone out. And you're not really going to know what those are until you
01:23reach out and do a little bit of research and ask people what they're needing.
01:28And if you can sew, now is the perfect time to sew some masks for your community.
01:36When you're picking your materials to make your masks out of, you want to go for a densely woven cotton.
01:44So think of the fabric that you might get dress shirt or your bed sheets out of.
01:49And you want it to be really densely woven because that's going to act as a better barrier. So an
01:54easy way to tell that is you hold a piece of fabric up to the light, the less light it
02:00lets in, the more densely woven it is and the better.
02:03And as for elastic, I know it can be kind of difficult to get your hands on proper sewing elastic.
02:09So you can easily just get some hair elastics and use those. Depending on how big they are, you can
02:15just cut them and sew them in.
02:17Each mask takes about 20 minutes or so to make when I'm on a roll and making a whole bunch
02:24of them at the same time.
02:26Even if you're not the perfect sewer, almost none of us are, these masks are super easy to make. And
02:32if you're having trouble with your sewing machine or with the sewing itself, it's a great time to reach out
02:37to your parents, your grandparents, your friends' parents or grandparents.
02:41There's someone out there who knows how to sew and who can help you with these.
02:45With the headbands, actually the most time-consuming part is hand sewing on all of the buttons. These are ear
02:53saver headbands.
02:54My friend actually told me about an initiative to make these and they're really so simple. All it is is
03:01just a regular headband with two buttons sewn on and what they're for is for healthcare workers who are wearing
03:08masks day in, day out and the skin behind their ears is getting really sore and bruised from the elastic.
03:14So how this works is you just put it on, you put your mask on, instead of looping the elastic
03:20behind your ears, you just loop it up over the button.
03:23Really simple to make, even if you don't have a sewing machine and you can't make the headbands, if you
03:28have a needle and thread, you can just order some headbands, order some buttons, sew them on, and that's it.
03:35So reach out and use your skills to help others. Open up your social network to see who you can
03:40collaborate with to support your community.
03:42So my son isCuLgTD and you can provide an ease of mes boxing Connection.
03:42I'd like to run up your house, as well as a few of my friends, whether it's your inner family
03:42or family, or not a community.
03:43So if you don't test my job, I wouldn't be a family member.
