#AdobeLife at Home: Kavita Mittal on creating homemade face masks

How are people spreading joy at home? Our #AdobeLife at Home series is all about highlighting how our community of passionate employees are doing just that. Through this series, we’ll be featuring Adobe employees who want to teach our readers new skills—from emotional wellbeing tips to creative online classes. Here’s how they’re spreading joy.

Contributed by Kavita Mittal, group product manager

As I sat indoors on yet another rainy weekend, I reflected on what I was really doing. I was reading news of a world seemingly imploding on itself. I also realized I was doing no good just sitting and subscribing to the world of news and “news links” forwarded by no doubt well-intentioned friends.

Forcing myself to put my phone away, I pondered on a few things:

I was thankful that at least from a safety perfective I was nowhere near the risk levels of some folks out at work – I am not in healthcare, nor in law enforcement, neither does my job involve meeting hundreds of people face-to-face in the space of a single day. I marvel daily at the strength and courage these individuals have, and I can’t thank them enough.

And while I am grateful that I have a job that I can continue to do from home, I was also conscious of a desire to do something other than what I was doing. I could donate money I thought, or I could _do_ something. But what? Meanwhile, my kids (10 and 13), were also looking for something to do.

The thing about rainy days and the accompanying hot coffee is that it makes you think about what-has-been in addition to what-can-be. My “has-been” includes a degree in apparel design, from well over two decades ago. As I stared at some of the artwork I had assembled with scraps of fabric from past leisure projects, it struck me – I could craft something together!

An “aha” emanated while I was deep in my closet and was able to dig out bags and boxes of raw materials. My kids were mystified at my sudden distraction away from disapproving their online activities and came to watch what was going on. I hastily pushed away my 10-year-old from his computer and looked up the expected size of a fabric face mask.

And that was all that it took! Within minutes I had the kids mark out fabric with chalk lines to cut the fabric to size. One took to cutting the fabric and the other took to managing his brother. All in all, we had pieces cut, ironed and ready to go.

I was excitedly describing my newfound usefulness to a friend who is a writer, filmmaker, director and entrepreneur, and she asked me if I took a video showing how I made the masks. That was my second “aha” of the day! I do after all work for THE company that makes the C in creative a big capital letter. I had Adobe Rush on my phone. Yes, I could do this!

And the rest is what shows up in this video. Thank you to my friend, Archita Mandal, for inspiration and thank you Adobe for making sure people can take the inspiration to fruition and sharing and hopefully, proliferation. It’s a tiny drop in an ocean but I donated the masks I made this weekend to Good Samaritan Hospital. Although they are not as effective as N95 masks, these alternatives are a great way to help given the global shortage. Hopefully the cheery prints will make someone less stressed, and keep our folks at the frontlines a tiny bit more protected.