For Susan Teffner, a parishioner of St. Anthony Church in White River Junction and an owner/vice president of sales for a Windsor machining business, the stay-at-home requirement of the Covid-19 pandemic gave her an opportunity to return to a hobby she enjoyed when she first joined the workforce: sewing.

And it was sewing with a purpose: making face masks to help stem the spread of the deadly virus.

“I had fun during the quarantine,” she said from behind a pile of colorful masks in process on the kitchen table of her West Lebanon, New Hampshire, home.

At first she made masks for family and friends, children and adults. She used fabric left over from projects she had worked on for her children and then asked friends for any unused fabric: All she had to buy was the lining material and elastic.

With a pattern she got online, Teffner, a choir member at St. Anthony’s, began sewing masks in March, working on them about 20 hours a week; each takes about a half hour to complete.

She found the project fun and continued making masks and donated them to an assisted living center and social service agencies.

The mother of three and grandmother of six began sewing when she was about 21, making clothes to wear to her job at the University of Miami in the personnel office. She used a Singer Featherweight.

Semi-retired now, Teffner, who grew up in Morrisville, hadn’t sewn for years and now sews on a Pfaff sewing machine, enjoying choosing the colors for the pleated masks she is making.

Paper masks are hard to find, she said, so she wanted to make sure that people who wanted to attend Mass — now that Masses again are open to the public — had one because one of the protocols is for worshippers to wear a mask. “That is my church,” she said, adding her hope that her donation of some two dozen masks will enable more people to go to Mass.

“I love it,” she said of giving things away.