Mother-daughter "Masking with Love" team creates cloth masks out of t-shirts

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INITIAL REPORT

A local mother-daughter team is working to get cloth masks to as many people as possible by making them out of t-shirts.

Masking with Love was started by the Saumerhammers. Dr. Tina Sauerhammer is a plastic surgeon. Mom Oki Sauerhammer has been a seamstress for 40 years.

Here's how it works: drop off a t-shirt at one of the Masking with Love sites (scroll down for information) and they'll make you a mask. The rest of the material will go masks for people in need at local shelters.

One t-shirt can produce about four masks.

Dr. Sauerhammer is not doing elective procedures during the coronavirus outbreak. She's only performing emergency procedures at her practice at the Wisconsin Institute of Plastic Surgery.

Oki had to close her Green Bay business Sewing with Love due to the Safer at Home order.

Together, they decided to use their skills to help the community.

"There was a study done in Cambridge that actually looked at different materials like cotton from t-shirts, of vacuum cleaner filters, and they actually looked at the size of microbes that were able to be filtered through the fabrics and also the breath-ability of the fabrics and they found that mixed cotton or cotton blend. So t-shirts had the best filtration or breath-ability at the same time," says Dr. Sauerhammer.

Here are the drop-off sites:

Azure Boutique, 113 N Wisconsin St, De Pere; Monday-Friday, 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Pure Barre Green Bay, 2621 S Oneida St Suite 108; Friday, April 17, 8-11 a.m.

If you'd like to reach out to the Sauerhammers, contact Dr. Tina on Instagram at