We are blown away by the community support for this project and the willingness of people to help.”

Sue Schurke

ELY— Despite all the challenges during the worldwide COVID-19 crisis, there are glimmers of hope right here in the North Country. Wintergreen Northern Wear is renowned for its locally-made winter gear, but with the business temporarily shuttered during the current pandemic, they’re looking for ways to help health care workers stay safe.
So now, the company is ramping up to begin manufacturing reusable protective gowns for North Shore Health Hospital and Care Center in Grand Marais. That’s in addition to their work with community volunteers to mass-produce protective face masks.
The specialized hospital gowns, worn by doctors and other medical personnel, are made from a special CDC-approved material that can be disinfected and sterilized for reuse. Wintergreen owner Sue Schurke received a sample gown just last Friday and spent the weekend creating a computerized sewing pattern for the specialized clothing so the pieces can be easily cut on their robotic cutting table. “I took the gown apart and created the pattern in exact measurements so we can mass produce these much needed gowns as quickly as possible,” Schurke said.
The Grand Marais facility has now contracted with Wintergreen to cut and sew 100 of the gowns. “We get the fabric this week and will get to work as soon as we can,” Schurke said. She expects to continue producing the gowns in the weeks and months ahead.
The fabric looks and feels like heavy plastic rip-stop nylon. Each gown consists of eight pieces of material along with cuffs and collars. “This is all medically approved, and I understand the gowns can be sterilized for multiple use,” she said.
While disposable gowns, made in China, are currently available, the supply chain is in danger of drying up as the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Medical supplies of all kinds are getting harder to obtain because of this pandemic,” she said.
Schurke said she sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz offering Wintergreen’s sewing services. “I didn’t hear anything from the state, and we started to put together the production of protective face masks,” she said.
Through a phone call last week from a pharmacist at Grand Marias, whose husband is a doctor at the North Shore Hospital, Schurke drove to Finland on Saturday to meet with her and was given a medical gown as a sample to develop a pattern. “As it happened, I gave her one of the protective masks we designed. She was so impressed with it, we were asked to make more,” she said. “But that’s another story.”
By Sunday, Schurke had the medical gown pattern loaded onto the computerized cutting board. “We are waiting on the fabric,” she said Monday afternoon. “We will start with a sample cut and make adjustments as needed and then get to work.”
She noted that she is hoping to minimize the amount of fabric used for each gown. “We want to get the most gowns out of each bolt of fabric. “We used to make paper patterns for our winter clothing projects, but now we have this automated cutting system that works so much better,” she said.
Wintergreen Northern Wear closed their retail store and manufacturing business last month out of an abundance of caution due to the pandemic. Like so many workers around Ely, their employees were laid off.
“First of all, we all want to do our part and help the response to this situation,” Schurke said. “If we don’t stay in business, we can’t help. This is great that we will be paid by the hospital to do this gown project.”
Protective masks
Wintergreen is also joining a community-wide effort in making protective face masks.
“These masks are not designed to prevent inhalation of COVID-19,” Schurke noted. They are meant to cover a cough or sneeze and reduce the spread of bodily fluids that might be expelled. They are designed using CDC guidelines.
“We are donating the use of our cutting machine and buying the fabric to make these protective masks,” Schurke said. Wintergreen employees Daina Antanaitis and LaVerne Ellis worked last weekend to machine cut the fabric, fine tune the design and assemble kits.
“We’ve had a number of talented sewers from the community take kits home to sew,” Schurke said. “We are blown away by the community support for this project and the willingness of people to help. We are very proud to be a part of Ely. It is in times like these where the strength and grit of the people of small town America truly shines.”
She counted as many as a dozen names of volunteer mask makers on a contact list. “Autumn Cole has another group of people who are quilters, and they are making about 300 masks right now. Polly Anderson is making another hundred masks. There are so many people out there who are stepping up to help.”
Wintergreen is waiting to receive a shipment of 200 yards of fabric and 10,000 yards of cotton twill tape to assemble more kits.
“There is a real need for these masks. I heard some say that this could last a year, maybe into next June. We may be just at the beginning of what we need,” Schurke said.