It’s known that winter in Kuterevo is not the most exciting season of the Kuterevo year. So as my cold and calm winter evening activity I, Kristine, wished to create carpets from old fabrics. It is a technique known all over the world – America, United Kingdom and even some people in Latvia do it, which was a surprise for me. But I learned to do it the Kuterevo way. It is a family evening activity, easy and quite addicting!

First, I had to prepare. I cut all kinds of old fabrics, shirts, pyjamas, pants – everything I could find! They need to be cut in 1-2 cm line, depends on the thickness of the fabric. Other volunteers and villagers also helped me to get and cut more fabrics to recycle.

To learn the art of carpets I visited teta Dragica. She showed me all the tricks and secrets in perfect carpet making. That is quite easy – all that’s needed is a crochet needle. The crocheting starts from the middle, the carpet grows with every lap. You can mix colors, experiment with different textures and patterns!

Now, I spend my days hunting for fabrics and my evenings cutting and crocheting. It’s a good feeling to save old, useless pieces of clothing and give them a new, colorful second chance!

But the most important things in cutting fabrics are good company and good scissors. We had bouth in the fabriks cutting party with our neighbours this week. The party was really warm . 25 people in one living room cuting fabriks, trying on old clothes, whach turkish serial, laugh, eat and drink and trying to communicate in a foreign language.

We had some waste after converting old clothes into rope, because rope for carpets should be straight. During the party Alice from France came up with idea how can we recycle them, so now in Postaja we are sewing teddy bears out of small pieces of fabriks which are useless for making carpets, stuff them with even smaller pieces of same fabriks and also add some thyme to make the teddy bear smell nice. Hopefully we will sell them in medoshop this summer 🙂

Recycling spirit in Kuterevo is very strong. Seems like everything can be recycled in Kuterevo. And It is not just about making new things out of old ones. Recycling in Kuterevo is a lot about having fun with your family, neighbours and friends. Well, from now also with foreign volunteers.

Go – recycling!

Kristine and Azat