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You Can Make Granny’s Mat Yourselves

The Excursion-Exhibition Centre “People’s House” holds theatrical interactive classes “Granny’s Mat” for schoolchildren and students.

One of the necessary and favourite occupations of the Upper Don Cossack women was needlework. In the long winter evenings, housewives made clothes, spun wool and manufactured cloth, knitted, crocheted and embroidered. Among the various products of the masters there were crocheted mats and rugs, which in the Don region were called “deryuzhka”.

They decorated the house placing it on the floor, benches, stoves and chests. Various mats and rugs became an integral part of the traditional decoration. Woven rugs, round mats were usually made of things that served their time away. That was an original technique of recycling and giving a new character to old things.

Now the interest in traditions is renewed, and bright and original things become decorations for many interiors. You can make a rug or a round mat on your own. Such a thing will be useful in your household and pleasant to look at.

In the classes the children learn about the history of this kind of handicraft, the technology of making mats and find a special interest in the master-class on making “Granny’s Mat” by themselves.

The class “Granny’s Mat” is going on. The schoolchildren and students are welcome to the People’s House.

Lyudmila Gnusina