Marguerite Rose and Sandi Price
The Material Girls Club whizzed past their goal of 5,000 masks with a final total of 8,373 masks made in 54 days.
In the beginning, Marguerite Rose, founder of the club, commented, “I doubt you’ll get 100 masks made.” After all the masks were completed, she joked, “If you had told me we had to make 8,000 masks, I would have never volunteered for this.”
Sandi Price, the coordinator for this project, led a group of 64 volunteers, mostly Material Girl members.
Her front porch was deemed “Mask Central.” Price explains, “this is where volunteers picked up kits, returned finished masks, and where recipients picked up their allotted masks. There were designated fabric cutters, elastic cutters, sewers, runners, and ironers. Sandi was the washerwoman.” There was no person-to-person contact, and the process worked smoothly.
The group donated to over 60 organizations, including many nursing and assisted living homes, medical facilities, food banks, Robson Ranch employees, the Denton Police Department, and even the FBI. As few as five masks to as many as 1,000 masks were given out at a time.
Word spread and donations poured in. The Material Girls Club did not keep any donation money above expenses. Price said, “It enabled us to donate $2,250 to the Denton Community Food Center.”
A couple of wonderful things happened to reward us for all of the hard work. AstraZeneca Pharmaceutical company, whose employees were working double shifts producing their version of a COVID-19 vaccine, were so grateful for our masks, they donated $10,000 to the Denton Community Food Center. And Nabisco donated a large amount of snack food to the same food center.”
When the elastic ran out, we thought it was a good place to stop, so on May 7 we ended operations and there was only one thing left to do … a drive-by celebration in Sandi’s driveway. Practicing social distancing, Sandi and Janice Martin-Geyer, her second-in-command, were given quilted pieces made by Marguerite Rose and gift certificates to—where else—Quilt Country quilt shop.