Recycling textiles in Rotorua: 'The fabric tells me what it wants to be'

Gayle Heath recycles discarded fabrics for a living and says her hands are always busy: "I can't just sit and do nothing."

Several shelves and clothing racks full of her colourful designs lined the walls of a small studio in her Rotorua home, when RNZ's First Up paid a visit.

There were handbags, rugs and decoration pieces made from old t-shirts and other items of clothing.

"Usually the fabric tells me how it wants to be used and what it wants to be."

Heath said she used at least 30 different techniques to work with all her different materials, and there was hardly a piece of fabric that she could not work with.

One of her favourite pieces was The Pacific Ocean Tunic, crocheted from "odd bits of yarn".

"It's all shades of blues and turquioses, and a few greens."

She also had a brown rug called the Kiwi Cloak, with Heath using old t-shirts, jerseys and striped garments to create it.

"If the colour was right, it went in."

But her go-to material was old t-shirts, she said.

"T-shirts are probably one of my favourite materials, mainly because there's so many of them and there's every colour you can dream of."

She also liked using old jeans.

"I make kids' rompers out of old jeans and then reversible. And the other side will be something like sheets or duvet cover."

But Heath did not always work with fabric, and actually started out as an accountant.

"It is the most boring career you can even dream.

"I actually opened a yarn and craft stop in Tauranga about 20 years ago.

" really got into recycling and textiles about 15-18 years ago, when I realised that 10 percent of the world's waste at least comes from the textile industry, so we have to change how we do this."

According to Tearfund, nearly 35 million kilograms of clothes were dumped in New Zealand every year, making 400 million kilograms in greenhouses gasses.

That was equivalent to the emissions of about 145,000 return flights between Auckland and London.

Heath's favourite piece was a medium-sized black and brown rug made from hundreds of discarded t-shirts and several materials of a fabric that was particularly difficult to work with.

"It's a man-made polyester horrible thing.

"I had to get scissors sharpened about three or four times just cutting the pieces for this rug."

She had stitched the fabric onto an old coffee sack to make the rug.

As for the raw textiles, Heath said those were pretty easy to source.

"There is so much waste material out there, it's so easy to get almost anything that you need second hand.

"Most of my t-shirts are ones that can't be sold.

"The quality is appalling, people wear them two or three times. They wash them, they fall apart, they give them to op shops. Op shops can't sell anything with marks, holes, stains. So instead of them having to pay for to dispose of it, I collect it."

She said Facebook Marketplace and TradeMe also came in handy to source materials.

A few months ago, Heath had to slow down after a botched surgery meant she could no longer work full time hours.

But that had not stopped her saving clothes from the landfill.

She also ran classes helping people learn recycling techniques.

"If you've got a group of friends who would like to learn any technique, particularly rag rag making, but it doesn't have to be a rag rug, it can be a cushion. It can be a wall hanging, it can be placemats for your table. I'm happy to come and teach you."

"We've got a caravan self-contained, so we can come to you."

Her favourite students were those who liked to push the boundaries.

"I love teaching children because their creativity has not been inhibited."

"They're very experimental. And if they say, 'can I do this?', I will 99 times out of 100, say 'yes' or say 'give me 10 minutes and I'll work out how we can do it'."