Coolibah Care resident and staff member make poppy dress for Remembrance Day

When Helga Oldenampsen, a resident of Coolibah Care Mandurah, met staff member Carolyne James, they instantly bonded over their mutual love of arts and crafts.

"The Day Club at Coolibah Care was making nests for animals after the bushfires, so I joined to help crochet the nests and it got me into crocheting again," Ms James said.

Helga is a member of the Day Club, and she has been crocheting since she was a small child.

"I learned crochet before I started school," Helga said.

"I lost two of my fingers in an accident so I needed to do exercises and my mum was handy at sewing and all of that, she was very crafty.

"We did all crafts - knitting, stitching, whatever I could use my hands for.

"I suppose my mum helped the greatest part of me."

Originally from Germany, Helga grew up and began working with her love of textiles full-time.

"I went into dressmaking later on, tailoring was part of it - that was my kind of life.

"I'm not 21, I'm 89," Helga laughed.

"I arrived here when I was 24 in 1956 - my brother sponsored me to come here because my mum had passed away before that.

"I had four brothers and I was the youngest - my brother tried to get us all to come here together but all my brothers sort of got themselves married and started having families.

"I was single so they sent me up here," Helga laughed.

When Helga arrived in Australia, she ended up meeting her future husband.

"I met hubby here, up in Northam - so that's it, we fell in love - that's what they say, isn't it?"

"We were married 52 years before he passed."

Helga also had to adapt her training in textiles to translate to the Australian style of stitching.

"Being from Germany, I still had to find out all the stitches - my German stitches were different sizes to the Australian ones."

After forming a friendship with Helga in the Coolibah Care Day Club, Ms James asked her to take part in a creative project with her.

"I saw something on the internet which was similar and I thought 'I quite fancy recreating that' - but I knew I couldn't do it on my own, so I asked Helga if she wanted to embark on this project with me," Ms James said.

The project was a red dress with a train made entirely from handmade poppies.

"We started the project in January because we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time."

"Carolyne had to keep going on trips down to spotlight - we had to buy more wool all the time," Helga laughed.

"We needed the wool to be the same colour otherwise it doesn't blend in."

Ms James said that between Helga and herself, they had spent 250 hours crocheting poppies and sewing them onto the gown.

"Helga helped and taught me to crochet again and it just went from there."

"It's beautiful really - Carolyne is the brains, she uses her brains very well," Helga laughed.

"You don't think of the hours - you just do it."

After eight months of hard work, crocheting over 700 poppies it was time to sew them onto the dress.

"We started sewing them on, Helga came and helped - we had to do it upside down, we turned them over and sewed them from the back side," Ms James said.

On the day the dress was finished, Helga had a scary experience which impeded her movement.

"Just after we finished sewing the poppies on Helga had a mild stroke which affected the right side of her body," Ms James said.

Helga said she had a stroke before, but that had affected her speech more than anything - this time it affected the right hand side.

The health scare didn't stop Helga from creating, with Ms James saying she had been continuing her projects since.

"Helga is still crocheting - she just made a beautiful blanket."

The poppy dress is on display currently at Coolibah Care, and the staff are holding a special game in order to raise money for the Day Club.

"We are doing a 'guess how many poppies are on the dress' game, and it's from 700-1000," Ms James said.

For now, Helga will continue to enjoy her creative projects and says she has great pride in the dress she created alongside Ms James.