Monterey County residents flock to fabric stores as they reopen on Monday
SALINAS, Calif. (KION) Monday was the first day of Monterey County's revised shelter-in-place order, and some businesses are reopening. Fabric stores are among them, and people are flocking to them.
A Salinas woman tells KION that she has already made about 50 masks. Now that she has stopped at Joanne's in Salinas, she has enough to make about 100 more.
"So I'm making some for myself and my coworkers," customer Latoya Pires said.
Pires works at a nursing facility, which is letting staff bring in their own cloth masks.
But there's a catch.
"I bought a bunch of cotton--hundred percent cotton--fabric," Pires said.
Her masks need to follow CDC guidelines, which specify the importance of cotton as the material.
"The stitching on it keeps out particles," Pires said.
With Monterey County's revised shelter-in-place order, fabric shops were given the green light to open on Monday. But they are taking precautions.
"It’s good because they’re doing, you know, only a certain amount of customers in at a time," Pires said. "So that helps."
But chains like Joanne's aren't the only craft stores doing well on their first day back.
"It’s been a wonderful day back," Back Porch Fabrics owner Gail Abeloe said. "Yeah, we’ve had a lot of customers in coming, buying fabric and it’s just been great."
Back Porch Fabrics, in Pacific Grove, said those customers were coming in looking for face-mask fabric and fabric for those projects keeping them busy during quarantine.
"Some were buying things to finish up projects that they’d been working on for the last month and a half," Abeloe said.
They said so many people showed up that they also had to cap the number of people inside at a time.
They also said they're hoping business will continue to be good in the coming weeks and months.
"Even people that were here go ‘oh god I saw that great fabric, I got to go back and get some because I don’t want it to be all gone,'" Back Porch Fabrics employee Kathy Miller said.
