Courtesy photos.
CENTRAL COAST — A local art student has become a true Righetti Warrior in the battle against the COVID-19 virus while home for the last two weeks, turning her talents into sewing safety masks for family, friends and now Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara.
Madison (Madi) Curran started on March 21, spending her first 20 minutes learning to use the sewing machine. After that, using a pattern and instructions from a hospital source, she has been turning out six a day. She plans to work daily until the crisis fades and all masks are being donated.
“I’m incredibly proud of her,” said her art teacher Melissa Johnson. The teacher wants to share what Curran, also a school spirit leader, has undertaken as a “lovely counterbalance to all the sadness and hardship going on in the county. We have terrific students” at Righetti, she added.
The artist turned seamstress started making masks, she said, because her mother needed protection while out for essential activities, like shopping. After filling her mother’s request, she has just kept sewing, giving them to “everyone else who needs protection so we can all get back to normal and I can go back to school,” Curran said.
Johnson said that after distributing the masks to family, Curran asked her mom where else they could be given. A nurse friend of Curran’s mother suggested Cottage Hospital. Nurses there are topping their N95 safety masks with Curran’s colorful creations to keep the other masks cleaner and extend their use.
Looking down at a Brothers sewing machine, combining cloth and elastic straps, Curran said she has no end goal and just plans to “continue until this is over.”