- April 16, 2024
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Jacqueline Hamilton holds up a couple Penny Bennnett's facemasks in her store, Chez Jacqueline. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Example of Bennett's masks
Examples of Bennett's masks
A selection of Bennett's St. Patrick's Day masks and scarves. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Examples of Bennett's masks
Jacqueline Hamilton, owner of Chez Jacqueline, poses with a selection of facemasks sewn by Penny Bennett.
Examples of Bennett's masks
Examples of Bennett's masks
It started when master seamstress Penny Bennett designed one silly mask for the Palm Coast Observer’s mask contest.
Flash forward eight months, and Bennett has sewn over 800 masks, ranging from the whimsical to the glamorous, all for a good cause.
Since mid-August, local boutique Chez Jacqueline has been selling Bennett’s masks and scarves with a portion of the profits benefiting the Flagler Women’s Club.
“We do a lot of fund raising for local nonprofits,” said Chez Jacqueline owner Jacqueline Hamilton, noting that a year ago most of the fund-raising events supporting non-profits in Flagler County as well as the rest of the country came to a halt because of the COVID-19 lockdown.
“When that stopped the nonprofits were really hurting,” Hamilton said.
Bennett was featured as one of the winners of the summer contest with her “sippy mask” in which she is shown sipping a glass of wine from a straw through a flap in her cotton mask.
That photo inspired an idea. One day when Bennett, a longtime friend of Hamilton’s, was visiting the store, Shara Rivera, Chez Jacqueline’s design consultant, asked if the seamstress would want to create unusual face masks to sell.
The idea took hold as a way to support a local nonprofit. As of March 11, the boutique has raised over $6,700 for the women’s club.
Bennett’s masks have covered the gamut from festive for Halloween, Christmas and Easter, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers mask celebrating the Super Bowl champs and patriotic star and stripes to the glitzy.
“We’ve had quite a few masks made for people going to weddings,” Hamilton said. “We had the mother of a bride come in. She had this gorgeous dress. Penny was able to use a little of the lace from the dress to make a custom mask for her and also a matching purse.”
Bennett was in business for 34 years in the Seattle area designing clothes and accessories. Her last 10 years she specialized in bridal dresses.
“She’s an absolutely amazing seamstress,” Hamilton said. “She’s really incredibly talented.”
Some of her face masks have taken just a few minutes to sew. One had so much detail it took her three hours to finish.
“It’s all in the embellishments,” Bennett said. “Some, especially during the holidays, had lots of bling. I’ve done little silk flowers to suggest spring. For Halloween there were spiders all over the place. Every spider has eight legs and all those legs had to be sewn on.”
She’s sewn many custom masks to match dresses.
“If someone can dream it up I can make it she said.”
Fund raising has always been an integral part of Hamilton’s business, usually through fashion shows. A red carpet runs through the length of the store that served as a fashion runway before the pandemic hit. Chez Jacqueline would charge $30 a person to attend the show, limiting the audience to 30 people to raise $600 for the nonprofit and provide word-of-mouth advertising for the store.
“We’ve done over 20 nonprofits,” Hamilton said. “And we only do local ones because we want the money to stay in the community.”
While the fashion shows are on hold, Chez Jacqueline continues to raise money for good causes. Customers can put coins in an enormous jar at the register to contribute to the Northeast Florida Jazz Association to help fund scholarships for music students.
The mask fund raiser has helped keep the Flagler Women’s Club afloat during a period when it has been unable to hold events, Rivera said, and it is showing no signs of slowing down.
“It’s very popular,” she said.
And Bennett is showing no signs of slowing down either.
“I’m having a great time making them,” she said. “I love sewing, and it’s for a good cause. Every cent I get goes to the women’s club. It’s an example of people working together for a good cause that’s necessary right now. We never dreamed it would go this far.”
