Tuesday 3 June 2025: Melanie Keane is this week’s guest and this is a 2 part series about her community sewing.

Melanie Keane’s sewing journey is a very community driven.

She began sewing 9 years ago through quilting.

In 2020 Melanie and her family sewed over 100 pairs of scrubs for frontline workers, transforming sewing into a meaningful family activity. This experience deepened her connection to the craft and led her to explore garment and bag making, where she found joy in blending functionality with artistic expression.

Beyond her personal projects, Melanie’s dedication to sewing extended into community service.

By fundraising for sewing machines and supplies, she empowered refugee women with a creative outlet and a sense of purpose. For many, this initiative became a path to healing and self-confidence.

Melanie’s sewing journey illustrates how sewing can be more than a skill—it can be a tool for reusing textiles, social connection, and something to look forward to each day.

In this episode, Melanie gives us her sewing background and how she got involved in running sewing groups for refugees in her local area.

The refugee centre was based in Guildford, Surrey. The new sewing project is in Woking, Surrey.

Tuesday 10 June 2025: Episode 2 is an insightful chat about how running the sewing groups for refugees has impacted Melanie personally.

In the 18 months after beginning sewing Melanie was asked ‘Do I know anyone who can sew…? 2 weeks later she arrived at the refugee centre with 2 old sewing machines and some donated fabric.

4 months later Melanie had 3 volunteers working with her, 8 fairly decent sewing machines and 15 women in the mixed nationality group. The women were voracious in their making and desperate to sew for their families, repair clothes and just escape from their pitiful circumstances for just a few hours.

Families had lived in the oppressive centre for over a year feeling hopeless and depressed. Sewing lifted their spirits, formed new relationships across the different cultures and allowed the women to feel like they were nurturing their families again.

Each week Melanie needed 25 metres of fabric and so she reached out to the sewing community, whose generosity astounded her. She ran the project for 15 months until the centre suddenly closed.

In this episode Melanie discusses how this impacted her and how she went on to set up another group for vulnerable women at The Lighthouse in Woking, Surrey.

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Thanks for listening to both episodes with Melanie Keane.