LYNN – In a little room at PACE on Market Street, cultural barriers are being broken down over baby blankets.Stella-Mae Seamans was interning at PACE (Program of All Inclusive Care for the Elderly), an organization that aims at keeping senior citizens out of nursing homes, when the idea of a sewing circle struck.Social worker Kristin Macek said there are a number of women, both Spanish- and English-speaking, who liked to sew and Seamans thought bringing them together through this common thread, so to speak, might be a good idea.It turned out, Macek said, to be an extraordinary idea.”It’s really kind of a cultural exchange. It is beyond my imagination,” she said. “It has really evolved.”The women have been meeting since February and, in that time, they have produced 28 fleece pillows, 12 fleece blankets, 1 crocheted blanket, 2 baby outfits and one potholder, all by hand. They have no sewing machines.But more then that, they have developed friendships, new understandings of each other’s culture and they are even learning new languages.Macek said Seamans began posting commonly used words like hem, thread and needle, on the walls of the room in both English and Spanish simply so the women could communicate with each other. It wasn’t long, Macek said, before the women began asking each other how to say other words and phrases and whole sentences were being posted.When Seamans started asking the women about their family names, she turned individual stories into family trees.”The women really began to learn about each other’s lives and their families,” Macek said.When Seamans’ internship was up, Macek said she was afraid the group would fall apart but instead it has continued to grow stronger.With donations and discounts from Zimman’s Inc., a Market Street fabric store, and from other PACE employees, the women have continued their sewing. The only problem, Macek notes with a laugh, is the constant shortage of lace.As she enters the small room on a recent Friday, Macek is immediately accosted for lace.Lillian Garcia is adamant that they need more lace, despite Macek’s insistence that she just bought some. Isobel Rivera is short just a few inches of lace on the blanket she is finishing and is painstakingly folding and gathering a different piece to fill in the blank.”Perfectionism,” Macek said, nodding toward Rivera. “They have to have lace. Everything has to have a touch of lace, it can’t be plain.”The women nod in agreement. Despite their cultural differences lace seems to be the other common thread in the group.Lillian said she learned to sew as a young girl while attending a vocational school in her native Puerto Rico. Later she said she worked in a girdle factory with her mother.She explains in her rapid fire Spanish that when her children were young she made their clothes – dresses for her daughter and shirts for her sons.Milady Marte sits quietly pulling tiny precise stitches through the rolled edge of a thick pink flannel blanket. She is new to the group but has been sewing for years. In her younger days, Marte said through an interpreter, she was in the fashion industry in her homeland, the Dominican Republic.Ethel Richey is quick to tell the story of how she made her own wedding dress out of satin for only $10. She also made her own prom dress, but never got to dance in it.”The guy I went with wouldn’t dance,” she said.Their days of making dresses and shirts are behind them, but the ladies all agreed early in their meeting that they wanted to do something productive with their sewing.”When we first got together we talked about a project, things that we could do,” Macek said. “We talked to Children’s Hospital in Salem. They were very appreciative.”The sewing has even become therapy for some of the ladies. Macek said when Garcia first started sewing her right hand was stiff with arthritis but she has since gotten a lot of dexterity back.Garcia said she doesn’t mind if her hands bother her.”It’s a labor of love,” she said. “I lo