A local tailor is switching gears from making alterations in clothes to sewing facemasks for the community, and she's garnering the support of residents in her building.

With facemasks being in high demand to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, Ditmas Park tailor Chrissie Dowler is putting her skills to new use making masks to donate to local organizations and essential workers.

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"This is at a time when nobody could get masks, so I thought ‘OK, I can do it.’ I have all the materials, which is fabric, elastic, I have the machinery, and I have the time and so I just started pumping out masks,” says Dowler.

Dowler says about a month ago residents in her co-op came together to create an eight-person mask taskforce, sewing 1,500 facemasks in that time.

She says the team created a self-isolated assembly line, in their separate apartments, where each person had a different task from sewing, to washing, to cutting fabric and elastic trim.

"I would leave fabric and instructions at somebody's door and they would cut the fabric into squares and return it to my door. Somebody's husband is very mechanically inclined, and he's like ‘I don't know how to sew but I think I can figure it out,’ and I gave him a machine and he learned on the job,” says Dowler.

With New York being the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Dowler says the team focuses their efforts on helping local communities, but they have also sent packages of facemasks as far as New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

She says that she and her team plan to continue making facemasks for as long as there is a demand.

"For me it's just the power of everyone coming together and making something happen,” says Dowler.