We had sent a handmade gift and a thank-you letter to our friends who are behind the Çul & Çaput Boutique. It was a letter to sisterhood of creativity, with love. They kindly posted the pics of the gift and the letter on their Insta account. Here is the link.

And here is a rough translation of our letter -which is also meant for all the sisterhood of creativity 🙂

“With love to Çul & Çaput

We, two sisters have fallen for the attraction of textile materials had been bought with enthusiasm but later discarded whether they were worn out or out of fashion. As we have more and more first-hand experiences about how this era of extreme consumerism and use-and-discard twisted our relations with our own selves and with others, the world and nature we decided to change our habits. At first, we told each other: Don’t Discard. Mend of Transform. As our results started to be loved by others as well, we embarked on “slow and sustainable sewing projects and a few years later, Sista & Sista Made was born. We were encouraged and inspired by you: two sisters who manifested Çul & Çaput Boutique with their hard work. And even though belatedly, we wanted to give our thanks to you with this “quirky” table runner.

A flimsy and holey coffee table cover, discarded but thankfully not thrown into a dustbin but been brought to one of the “Your Trash, My Treasure” meeting we have each month in Datça town + a faded pillow cover, printed with elegant flower and butterfly patterns + fabric cut offs in gorgeous colors that been saved from the dustbin by a thoughtful friend at the end of a natural dyeing workshop + another flower printed cotton cut off a friend wanted to get rid of + embroidery threads a Dutch friend gave to us, from her late mother’s sewing supplies + some length of a light shade of green colored silk thread, wound around a wooden spool.

All those materials came together by the help of a little bit sewing machine but mostly by hand stitching during that week which lasted almost forever when forest fires broke in Bodrum and Marmaris. The result is this table runner that we may title as “Nature can self-transform and rejuvenate but it is almost too late for us to mend and repair the holes in our minds-bodies-souls.” It contains a little bit “wabi-sabi” and a pinch of “kintsugi.”

Naturally, this table runner will fade, wear out, be stained in time. It is temporary. Like the rest of everything is. Like all of us are. Maybe you will add new patches to it, embellish it, mend it with different colored threads. Maybe it will be material for a bag or a couple of pillow covers. So, it keeps on being transformed.

Let us thank you again for inspiring us and our other sisters with your exemplary hard work, productivity and sister-solidarity and for adding color and creativity to life with your products.

We hug you tightly,

Yasemin and Ebru, “The Sistas”