UPDATE: The Masking with Love team has been overwhelmed by generosity and donations. At this time, they are not taking any more donations. But it is still a wonderful story…
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 Sauerhammers. UW-Green Bay alumna and member of the Chancellor’s Council of Trustees, Dr. Tina Sauerhammer ’99 (Human Biology) is a plastic surgeon. Her 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. 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.
Alumnae use creativity to create masks and support the cause
Wherever you go, UW-Green Bay alumni are showing tremendous compassion, as well as ingenuity to help in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ebanie Schmidt fires up the 1945 Kenmore
Ebanie Schmidt
UW-Green Bay 2019 alumnus and entrepreneur Ebanie Schmidt (Art), owner of Ebanie & Ivorie, is making masks for family, friends and an animal hospital in Neenah on her Kenmore sewing machine from 1945 (above). Schmidt has had such a high demand for masks, she is asking $5 per mask from the general pubic to replenish materials. Contact her at
ebanie@ymail.com or call 920-422-4842.
