Our Cutters and Our Seamsters - Leave a message for the team!
Ninth Isle is honored to present our hard working VIPs, who each had a significant hand in hand-making your cloth face mask. It's a little early for a celebration or ceremony, but considering that many of you have invested your time to thank us and our team, this thank-you page has been made.
Please meet our 2 fabric cutters, Samson and Way.
These two men are responsible for cutting fabric into the exact shapes and proportions of the face mask. Their cut fabric acts as an intuitive instruction manual and guide for our seamsters to help them quickly and accurately sew each mask. If you're wondering, we actually call and pronounce his name as "Way". Like "Way-to-go". Our longest running pun is "If there's Way, there's a way."
Next we have our seamstresses and seamsters. Let's use a list for this one. If not for each person, we would be incapacitated by the sheer volume of orders.
Winnie, Julie & Ryan, Thina, Nga, Annie, Chen (Way's wife), Ann, and yours truly!
Sewing was a massive challenge. During normal times, production works as an assembly line, each step has a dedicated time and person. During stay-at-home orders, we are only able to do what we can at home with our household members. Luckily, this means that those with kids are able to get free help. Those whose children have moved out, well, they just worked extra extra hard. We started with just Winnie and Julie/Ryan. The learning curve was steep, but they stepped up, shared info, and kept pushing out masks one by one. They were able to share this info with our later collaborators to significantly boost production. Each seamstress shared our values of providing necessary face masks for our community and country at an accessible price for all. This means that each person had donated their time and labor. It was this combined efforts on all sides that we are able to provide these quality hand-made multi-layered face masks at such affordable prices. On April 9th, we really saw the power of 8 professional seamsters and 1 nervous amatuer (me). We knocked out 75% - 80% of our backlog, which meant that not a single person waited more than 2 days for their order to get shipped.
If you'd like to thank our 2 cutters and 8 seamsters, please leave your comments below. Things are still tough on everyone, so your kind words of encouragement keep us going!
We all would like to thank you as our customer, if not for your support and personal recommendations to friends, we wouldn't have the opportunity to use our skills for a good cause!
Note: We might be able to get photos of each person. I know many of them are shy, but let's see who can't be coaxed into OK-ing a little photo for the blog.
Mahalo nui loa all! My entire family needed masks for work and for the foreseeable future. With family members in retail pharmacy, hospital staff, and home development they are considered essential workers and must continue to work on-site. Just placed my second order with you. A dear friend works at a major hospital in NY and hasn’t been able to get any supplies for herself during her days off so having the option to ship to her is truly a blessing. Thank you so much for your hard work and tireless hours you have been putting in to support the safety of our community! It means so much right now having access to masks at an affordable price, of great quality, and beautiful design to keep our spirits up and loved ones safer.
Lynn on
Everyone there awesome! Thank you very much for the excellent masks we ordered from you and ordered more. They are precisely cut and sewn and everyone of you should be proud of them and thank you all for your service during the COVID-19 pandemic. P.S. Stay Healthy and stay safe!
Delwyn on
Everyone there awesome! Thank you very much for the excellent masks we ordered from you and ordered more. They are precisely cut and sewn and everyone of you should be proud of them and thank you all for your service during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Delwyn on
To the entire staff – Words cannot express the deep gratitude I have for all the time & effort you spend in making your beautiful face masks. Each and everyone of you play an important role in accomplishing what you do. Thank you for thinking of us who might not know how to sew or may not have the equipment to do so. I pray that God continue to give you all the strength needed to continue in your work and that he blesses you for everything that you do. Keep up the wonderful work that you are doing and please, whenever you can, please take the time to rest and take care of yourselves. Because without you, I wouldn’t have the beautiful face masks that I will always cherish. Take care, stay safe and a million mahalo nui loa to each of you.
Nellie on
To the entire staff – Words cannot express the deep gratitude I have for all the time & effort you spend in making your beautiful face masks. Each and everyone of you play an important role in accomplishing what you do. Thank you for thinking of us who might not know how to sew or may not have the equipment to do so. I pray that God continue to give you all the strength needed to continue in your work and that he blesses you for everything that you do. Keep up the wonderful work that you are doing and please, whenever you can, please take the time to rest and take care of yourselves. Because without you, I wouldn’t have the beautiful face masks that I will always cherish. Take care, stay safe and a million mahalo nui loa to each of you.
Nellie on