A Skirt Made From a Dyed Blanket

The folk costume was made in a refugee camp in Denmark. Vera Puķe-Puķīte, the maker of the costume, recalls: “You know what the Latvians did? They dyed woollen bedspreads black! And they sewed skirts from them, and on the bottom edge they put a red ribbon on which they had embroidered those folk designs. They really wanted the children to be dressed in the folk manner, too. None of us adults had any folk costumes back then. We had just what we had brought from Latvia… Who could have brought a folk costume along?! It wasn’t something people thought about. They just thought about what was necessary and could be put in a few bags, and that was it.”