Sylvan Lake business owner Christine Engel, with daughters Ellabelle (11) and Olive (9), who helped her make 150 medical gowns for The Mustard Seed. (Supplied)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

act of kindness

Creation of medical gowns gains Sylvan Laker provincial recognition

May 23, 2020 | 10:15 AM

A Sylvan Lake woman has been recognized for her work to provide vital PPE to isolation centres in Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton operated by The Mustard Seed.

Christine Engel, whose home business is called The Wedding Seamstress, couldn’t stand by and do nothing when nuptial-related orders stopped coming in, and after the premier appealed to Albertans to help out through the Bits and Pieces initiative.

For her efforts, she was recently named a recipient under the Northern Lights Volunteer Recognition Program.

“Spring is generally my busiest time of year, but I was shut down in March so I had a bit more time on my hands,” she shares. “Kenney mentioned some costumers in Calgary who were making PPE and I thought I could do that pretty easily too.”

Engel found on The Mustard Seed’s website that they were initially looking for help to procure 190 medical gowns for their isolation centres, and decided to go for it.

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However, not having the resources to make all 190, she shared the pattern and instructions with close to 40 other sewers in her network, and eventually they got the job done.

After some fabric was donated, and The Mustard Seed paying for the rest, the final tally came to a revised need for 150 reusable medical gowns.

“I had a Zoom meeting with the premier a couple days ago and he just expressed his thankfulness,” says Engel, who admits she certainly wasn’t looking for the spotlight. “We chatted for 10 or 15 minutes and he verbally shared his appreciation.”

Scott Tilbury, fund development officer for The Mustard Seed in Red Deer, says the organization is very proud of Christine.

“She coordinated all these seamstresses in central Alberta, provided the design, ordered the fabric, sent it to them, and then went and collected all the gowns,” he says.

“One thing she said to me when I went to thank her was, ‘Scott, thank you for the opportunity to give back.’ To her, it was a privilege to do this.”

For more information about Bits and Pieces, visit Alberta.ca/covid19, and for more volunteer stories, visit Alberta.ca.