A few weeks ago, a Year 1 class at Rose Bay Public School in Sydney took part in an intergenerational sewing project with seniors from Holdsworth Community Centre as part of the Dementia-Friendly Woollahra program. Together they sewed simple felt hearts, but the real story was the connection, conversation and sharing that happened between the children and the older adults.
Unfortunately, I was away for the first three weeks of the four-week program, visiting my mother’s oldest friend, now in her nineties, in Vienna and then my eight-month-old grandson in Ankara, but I was lucky enough to be back in Sydney in time to join the final session.
The plan was simple: sew hearts together. The actual hearts were made from felt stuffed with polyester fibrefill, but the joining together of the old and the young is the real story here.
I guess it’s a simple story of sharing. And perhaps of strange coincidences too: one morning, an elderly woman, not even a part of the official program, turned up and revealed that she been a student of Rose Bay as a child. Now a hundred years old, she still lives at home with her husband who’s a hundred and two. She shared amazing memories about how the school once looked and what she remembers being taught there. The kids were all ears. I was too.
How the project began
I had been talking to Sarah, the teacher librarian at Rose Bay Public School about taking part in the Global Kids Sewing Party and somewhere along the way the idea, as ideas often do, developed into something quite unique: an intergenerational sewing project, running over several weeks, and bringing Year 1H students and their teacher, Hannah, together with seniors living with dementia.
I hadn’t sewn softies with seniors before, let alone thought of pairing them with young kids. I could see how well this could work and that simple handsewing could be a wonderful activity for this group. I was thrilled to be involved and thankful to the teachers who took the idea of sewing softies with their kids in this direction.
Before the seniors came into school, I went to help Sarah and Hannah, together with a small group of Year 1 children, prepare.
With the teachers I spoke about what materials they’d need, how to avoid or deal with the more predictable problems, and tried to make them feel confident and comfortable with the basic process of hand sewing. As for the students, the heart softies were deliberately simple. They could happily concentrate on running stitches, putting their felt hearts together and stuffing without the project becoming too complicated. And that simplicity left plenty of room for other things to happen
Sewing gave everyone a reason to be together
Each week the seniors came into the classroom and sat alongside the children.
They sewed. Talked. Helped one another. Told stories. And it seems, that for many of these sessions – I was still in Vienna or Turkey – there was a lot of chatting.
The finished hearts will become part of the school’s Art by the Bay exhibition, but what happened while they were being made was more important than the finished pieces.
One of the seniors, Felicity, described how much she valued simply having the opportunity to spend time with children again: “My grandkids are all grown up so I don’t have the opportunity to be with children anymore.”
And she felt that the connection between generations was important for everyone involved: “It’s good for both sides. It’s a real enjoyment for the adults to be in this environment with children.”
For another senior, Jan, the experience was an eye-opener, almost a defining moment. Jan had never had children herself, had spent much of her life travelling and yet described this project as the most interesting thing she’d done in years.” She said with surprising openness: “I think it gave me a new look on life.” Age, it seems, is no barrier to new growth.
Yet another senior, Timothy, admitted that he just loved the time spent “being here and being with the children”. He described them as respectful, interested and collaborative and he regretted that this kind of simple happy “multi-generational interaction” is increasingly missing from many older people’s lives.
And what did the children think?
Their responses were just as refreshing.
Many enjoyed being with the seniors and sharing with them. And many understood that they weren’t simply being helped by or helping the seniors, that the enjoyment and the experiences and the learning were flowing both ways.
One comment that stayed with me was: “I like that we were helping each other to learn new things and talking about histories because it’s important to communicate with our friends.”
But perhaps the simplest and most comprehensive comments were: “We made them feel happy and they made us happy”or “They made us laugh and smile and that makes me feel happy.”
Why sewing works so well across generations
I’ve always known that sewing is about much more than learning how to use a needle and thread.
A simple sewing project gives people something to do with their hands while they talk. There’s no pressure to keep a conversation going. Someone needs help threading a needle. Someone holds a piece of felt while somebody else stitches. You notice what the person beside you is making. You ask a question. You share a thought or a feeling.
And importantly, everyone has something to contribute.
The adults weren’t simply there to teach the children and the children weren’t simply there to entertain the adults. They were doing something together. Making something together.
The children learned some sewing skills and made beautiful hearts for their exhibition. But they also spent four weeks getting to know these elderly people.
And the seniors didn’t simply come into a classroom to watch. They also were in the thick of what was happening.
A needle, some thread and a simple felt heart don’t sound like much.
Sometimes they’re not. But sometimes they’re enough to get people sitting around the same table and sharing the whole way they see and feel and live life.
And that’s where sewing – and in this case, sewing softies – begins to become wonderfully and truly alive.
Planning an intergenerational sewing project?
If you’re thinking about bringing children and seniors together to sew, here are a few things that will help.
1. Prepare a small group of children first.
Before the project began, the teachers chose a small group of five or six children to sew with me. They learned how to make the heart softie from beginning to end, so when the full group started sewing, there were already a few children who knew what to do and could help the others.
2. Keep the sewing really simple.
The heart softies needed only a running stitch, two pieces of felt and some stuffing. There were no complicated techniques to learn, which meant everyone could concentrate on sewing together rather than worrying about getting things right.
3. Have the needles pre-threaded and ready to go.
The children didn’t need to learn to thread their needles. Everything was prepared beforehand so they could pick up a needle and start sewing. With young children especially, removing that one potentially frustrating step made things much easier.
4. Start every session with the same simple sewing reminders.
At the beginning of each of the four sessions, Hannah quickly went over the sewing rules again: keep your stitches about a pinky-width apart, don’t look at the back of your work, and as soon as your needle touches the table, flick it back up through the felt for the next stitch. A quick reminder was enough to get everyone going again.
5. Don’t make perfect sewing the goal.
Wonky stitches don’t matter. The sewing gives everyone something to do together — and leaves room for helping, talking, laughing and sharing stories. In this project, those moments turned out to be every bit as important as the hearts everyone made.