Stitch Kitchen launched the 4KT Elephants project in 2019 to raise awareness of the "elephant in the room" — about 4000 tonnes of textiles that ended up in landfill in Dunedin.
Stitch Kitchen co-founder and studio manager Fiona Jenkin said it was exciting to reach the halfway point of 2000 elephants made and donated.
"We've had so many wonderful volunteers working hard and having great fun using the fabric scraps we have from our classes and donations to our second-hand haberdashery."
Stitch Kitchen aimed to reduce textile waste and its impact on the environment with creative thinking.
Looking at the problem of textile waste worldwide could be overwhelming, so it helped to start out small, she said.
“I love that quote from Arthur Ashe — ‘start where you are, use what you have, do what you can’. You don't have to solve the global problems of fast fashion and consumerism, just start with your own little pocket of it.”
Stitch Kitchen taught people to sew and be creative in their re-use of textiles, bringing people from the community together to share materials, ideas, skills and time.
The toy elephants had been given to organisations including Tedz4kidz Dunedin and Foster Hope Otago.
"It is really exciting to see the enthusiasm when people receive them, and it's really fun for the volunteers to make them, because they're simple, but they're so full of character because we're using fabric scraps.”
Operated by Just Atelier Trust, Stitch Kitchen became a charitable trust in 2019.
It relies on donations to supplement its revenue and is grateful for funds from the Dunedin City Council, the Lottery Grants Board and the ANZ Staff Foundation, which sponsored six months of the mending workshops this year.
“We would love to be employing people and teaching them the skills to make desirable products — we’re looking at boosting our staffing," Ms Jenkin said.
“We want to be able to cover our operating costs from revenue that we generate, but at this stage we are still very dependent on that funding for wages, but also for project costs.”
Visit stitchkitchen.nz for more information or to give.
