Tracy Buturla is typically busy with her other business, building college care packages for students off at school.

“That’s not happening right now,” she said. “But that’s totally fine with everything going on.”

The stay-at-home mom said this is normally a hectic time with lacrosse season; she has a son who is a senior who plays. Instead of planning pasta parties for the athletes, Buturla shifted her energy to find a task that would help others – making protective masks for nurses.

“We have two friends from the lacrosse and football teams who are nurses,” she said. “They were telling me about the shortages, which of course, everybody knew because of the news. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that they don’t have what they need. It was blowing my mind.”

Buturla discovered that it was a matter of putting cloth masks over the N-95 masks and as nurses only get one per shift, she said it was a “no brainer.”

“I was initially doing it by myself,” she said of sewing the masks. “I’m glad I got some help.”

As of this week, there are more than 25 ladies sewing, including a 9-year-old who is helping by knitting mask extenders with buttons. In some cases, Buturla said there are some nurses at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center who are not working with COVID-19 patients who are wearing the cloth masks without the N-95s.

The group began small, as Buturla posted information on the Facebook walls for parents of students on the lacrosse and football teams. The response was overwhelming.

“At the end of March, I started doing them by myself,” she said. “I was giving them to Jackie Gauthier and Laura Fleury Forgione, for their two hospitals (Lahey Hospital is the other). We really want to be able to do it for other groups, but we know that will just dilute our efforts.”

The list of ladies includes Buturla, Donna Barrows, Alison Kalman, Beth Kinder, Beth Barba and her three children, Kim Hoyle Taylor, Melissa Bodi, Jacqui Boivin Trainer, Colleen Murphy-Ducharme, Carrie Sullivan, Tara Dulac, Carrie Dawe, Sarah Boudreau, Lisa Ura Bolinger, Lisa Deitrich, Meenakshi Shinde, Karen Fletcher, Debbie Jolicoeur, Mary Kay James, Lisa Gosselin, Judith Culver, Collette Keefe, Doreen Townsend, Heidi Johnson and Briley Landsteiner, the 9-year-old sister of a fellow lacrosse player.

Buturla said when they give their friends masks, they are distributed throughout each hospital. So far, the group has sewed 1,300.

“This week we really got it together,” she said. “We’ll be able to do 500 this week.”

They’ve gotten material for the masks donated by a woman named Beth Kinder, who is a quilter. She was very happy to purge her inventory.

“She’s been working full-time and cutting 500 sets of material for us every week,” Buturla said. “I know that eventually she’ll run out as we really ramp up production. But just yesterday, we got three or four hundred more sets, so I think we’re going to be OK with material.”

Buturla said the group hopes to inspire some student-athletes or parents of athletes, show them how the masks are made and increase their volume.

“The next thing we wanted to do was to donate the masks with the lunches that are being provided for kids that are food insecure,” she shared. “We thought a lot of those parents might be essential workers. We’re going to try to get another group together to tackle that.”

Buturla has the task of orchestrating and organizing the 25 women. She doubts that their valiant efforts will ever reach a peak.

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said. “I did say to Laura and Jackie to let us know if they don’t need anymore. They wash them. They are able to reuse them, because they just go over the other masks.”

That’s when Buturla and the others thought about being able to make masks, for other groups, including those who might be homeless.

“I don’t think we’re there yet, sadly,” she said. “We have had a lot of people contact us to buy some. We thought about that and donating the money to the nurses for lunches and coffee. But again, then we thought we might be taking them away from the people who really need them.”

Laura Fleury Forgione, a unit director at Southern New Hampshire Health, wears a mask made by local seamstress Tracy Buturla.

There are dozens of outlets, nursing homes among them, that could also use masks. Buturla said that while “it’s not brain surgery, we need to figure it out.”

“That’s why I’m hoping to encourage more people to get involved,” she said. “It’s so easy. None of us have ever really sewn a lot. These are straight stitches.”

The group used a template, a 10-inch by 7-inch rectangle. For securing the masks over the ears, they use simple elastic.

“Elastic was actually difficult to find,” she explained. “We found 188 yards on Etsy. It was $50, they’re kind of price gouging, but my husband bought it and Beth donated another spool.

Buturla has her son home from school and said this has been tough on him. No prom, no athletics, no graduation. Kids are missing their rites of passage.

“I think I speak for a lot of the kids,” she said, fighting back tears. “I don’t know what to say. This has been hard on them. They understand that people are dying. But it’s so tough. They are away from their friends and their schedules.”

There’s been some glimmering hope that maybe there could be a graduation in August, but with her son heading to Keene State in the fall, Buturla isn’t certain about anything right now.

“He’s like, ‘Mom do you really think we’re going to Keene in the fall?'” she asked. “We don’t know. We can only control so much. That’s why this has been helpful to a lot of people. Some of them have little kids. When I was little, my mom used to sew, and it was therapeutic. We’re doing something constructive right now through all of this.”

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