It's the modern take on something your great-grandmother might have done: turning old clothing into colorful rugs. Two Swedish designers are spending one year—August 2012 to August 2013—making one experimental rug each month from sweaters and t-shirts they rescue from local secondhand stores. Everything they use is too damaged or threadbare to still be worn as clothing.
As the designers point out on their website [in Swedish], we're buying and wasting enormous amounts of clothing around the world. Why not find a better use for the clothes we're throwing out? The designers are testing a wide range of techniques and patterns. After the project finishes, they plan to continue making the most successful designs, both in handmade versions and potentially in manufactured versions as well.
It's an interesting project that could be interpreted by local designers everywhere. The United States is the largest exporter of secondhand clothing in the world, shipping more than 7 billion pounds overseas every year. We need better design to reduce waste (10-year hoodie, anyone?) but this is a great solution for recycling some of the piles of clothes we already have.
Images courtesy of Katerina Brieditis and Katerina Evans.
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