Austin Peay theatre professor sewing masks for health care workers, Operation Come Together

Masks Dyer sewed for hospital workers.

(Posted April 29, 2020)

When the coronavirus pandemic forced Austin Peay State University Professor Leni Dyer to stay home in mid-March, she wanted to find a way to help during the crisis.

“My first instinct was how can I help, what can I do other than just sitting at home waiting for this to end?” Dyer said. “What can I do to help people?”

Dyer, who teaches costume design in the Department of Theatre and Dance, found a way to help as she worked to move her sewing and advanced makeup classes online in response to the crisis.

She saw a social media call for volunteer sewers from Operation Come Together – a locally run effort working to produce fabric masks and face shields for health care workers in the region.

“Being a costume designer one of my skill sets that I’ve learned over the years is how to sew,” Dyer said. “Sewing as part of a way to help people is really very gratifying to me.”

Leni Dyer - We Can't Make It Without the Arts

Helping from home

Dyer had just returned from a cruise and was in self-quarantine at her house when she contacted Operation Come Together.

“I didn’t leave the house,” she said. “I didn’t see anybody. So, they actually brought people to the house. They’d leave a bag (with materials) on the front step, and I’d go get the bag and make the masks.”

Operation Come Together then retrieved the finished masks from Dyer’s front step.

Dyer has made well over 100 masks in several exchanges with the operation.

“I’ve gotten the one down to a science, and it takes me eight minutes to make a mask,” she said. “That’s with the fabric already cut out and everything prepared.”

Dyer said her masks have gone to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and to Tennova Healthcare, among other local places.

Operation Come Together needs help

Dyer models one of the masks she made herself, inspired by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Operation Come Together’s Clarksville operation has produced more than 20,000 masks since it started on March 20, said founder Victoria Shoulders.

The operation has more than 200 volunteers, but it needs more.

“The demand is growing more and more,” Shoulders said. “We need more sewers. We need more volunteers here cutting fabric and T-shirt ties. College students are greatly needed right now to volunteer from our site to prep kits for our sewers.”

Operation Come Together has operations at Fort Campbell, Hopkinsville, Clarksville, Dover, Erin, Dickson, Cookeville, and Robertson, Sumner and Davidson counties. Every operation is responsible for its area’s needs.

The main distribution site is at 327 Warfield Blvd. in Clarksville.

If you want to help, visit or call 931-220-9896.

‘Anything I can do to help’

Masks Dyer sewed for Fort Campbell.

Dyer said helping was a no-brainer for her, especially with her sewing skills.

“To me it’s a great honor because I feel like anything that I can do to help somebody, anything that I can do to give back is always at the forefront of anything that I do,” Dyer said.

If she still had face-to-face classes with her students, Dyer would ask them to help.

“I would have gotten my whole class in on this, and we would have been making factory-level masks,” she said.

Teaching a sewing class online

After APSU moved spring and summer classes online, Dyer had to adapt her sewing and advanced makeup classes.

“I sat down, and I really thought about the two classes,” she said. “On ground, if somebody’s machine was messing up, I could go over and explain it to them, I could sew something and show them how I did it. It’s really a hands-on kind of class.”

Dyer asked which of her students didn’t have sewing machines at home. Four didn’t, so she adapted the class to have everybody work on all the parts of the next sewing project that they could (get, tend and cut the patterns, for example). Those who had machines sewed, and those who didn’t worked on another project.

“I’ve offered to FaceTime with them or anything like Zoom to be able to help them if they’re really having trouble,” she said. “What (the pandemic) actually has done is made me much closer with those students. When they’re in class, they ask the questions, but this has been more personal.”

To learn more

If you want to help Operation Come Together, visit or call 931-220-9896.
The College of Arts and Letters has launched a YouTube coronavirus-coping series named "We Can't Make It Without the Arts." You can watch it at .
To learn more about the Department of Theatre and Dance, go to /theatre-dance/.
To learn more about Leni Dyer, visit /theatre-dance/departmental-info/faculty/leni-dyer.php.

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