JOURNAL

Venice, CA • Established 2012 • Handmade & Created By Matthew Schildkret

LSA in the Time of Corona

Snuggle pirates keep sailing

We're writing this 45 days after having closed the doors to our shop in Venice California. From October 9th 2015 until March 15th 2020, we had never been closed for more than a day at a time. Now it's been 45 days and so much has changed in all of our lives. Thankfully our LSA Crew are all healthy and doing well during this self-isolation period. It's been quite a journey over the past two months, and we wanted to fill you in on what's happening.

We decided to shut our doors a week before it was mandated by the city. We could see what was coming and wanted to make sure we didn't expose our crew to a virus we didn't know all that much about at the time. We all went home and waited... within a week or so it became clear that the shortage of masks in this country was going to be a problem. Not just for our community, but also for health care workers on the front-lines of this pandemic.

Our shop queen Andrea had already started making masks at home, and she showed us the templates she was using. We modified the design to fit our machines and we went to work. Our goal was to create 1-for-1 masks for our community and for each purchase we would make and donate a mask to healthcare providers and communities in need.

We assembled a small crew to handle the incoming demand. Thankfully we had a lot of amazing fabrics that we could use, so as soon as we got our hands on a giant roll of non-woven interfacing (inner filter layer) we started cutting and sewing masks full time. By the end of the week we had made 600 masks. Over the next two weeks we packaged and shipped over a thousand envelopes all over the country and quite a few to international destinations.

We are so happy that we could be of service to our Snuggle tribe and also help out the people who needed masks the most. So far we've donated 7535 masks, and as we make more masks we are keeping the 1-for-1 program going.

Now that things are starting to normalize and masks are not in short demand we've finally had more time to get back to making content and sharing how to best wear your masks. This strange pandemic has even brought a new character to our crew... meet Orion. He's helping us teach everyone how to Knot & Bless their masks.


We're grateful that during these tough times our ship and our crew were able to shift direction and be a positive force for our community. We are blessed to have such amazing Snuggle Pirates that we get to create with each day!

Tags: Inside View
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