Each week up to a dozen women give up their time and offer their skills, to help people they’ll never meet.
On Tuesdays at the Werribee shop, the group ‘Sew Can I’ get together and sew quilts to donate to the hospital.
The quilts are made to give to families with a loved one in palliative care, a baby who spends time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), or for parents who lose a child.
Jenny Podesta and Lotte Colebrook are some of the women in the group.
Lotte has been sewing with the group for about two years, and says together the women socialise and help each other out.
“We all bounce off each other. If somebody’s stuck, they help you and they’ll show you how to do different things,” Lotte said.
Jenny and her sister Kaye were taught how to sew by their mother, an Indigenous woman who grew up in Gundagai in the 1940s.
“My mother was a beautiful sewer, beautiful. She was very crafty,” Jenny said.
Reminiscing as they sew, Jenny says she finds that memories get stronger, rather than fading as she ages.
“I’m starting to remember what she did and all the craft things we did together,” Jenny said.
The techniques her mother learned eighty years ago are being stitched into the seams, and thereby supporting dozens of family units.
The quilts vary in size but all are made with fabric sourced from premier fabric art store, Aboriginal Art Fabric.
The Alice Springs based fabric store puts money back to community, reinvesting in communities and artists.
The initiative was started by Director of Aboriginal Health Strategy Belinda Cashman, seeking to help new parents through grief and mourning.
“We want to reinvest in our parents, to use our services to show them that we’re culturally appropriate and that we can be sensitive to the needs of mums and bubs,” Belinda said.
Indigenous newborn babies are more likely to be born with a low birth weight, leading to more time spent in NICU.
Families come to Westmead Hospital from as far west as Inverell and Grafton.
Belinda says the hospital has a unique opportunity to promote cultural safety at a tender time for families.
“Having a program like this where we can show not only women who live in our local health district, but also women who come from other places, that we are culturally sensitive, that we are able to meet their needs and that we want them to have the best experience possible,” Belinda said.
These blankets will also be given to parents and families of babies who pass, as well as those in the NICU, as a symbol of culture, compassion and care.
“I suppose that’s why we do it, because we just need for people to feel that somebody is thinking of them, maybe not directly, but we are thinking of them,” Jenny said.