BARYSHIVKA, UKRAINE From the second floor of the dilapidated factory building, you can hear the buzzing of sawmills and the happy chattering. Seven women greet our filming team, but the seamstress doesn’t lift the pedal.
This workshop produces hundreds of t-shirts, hoodies and sweatpants for soldiers who have had their limbs amputated.
It’s buzzing when Liudmyla Izova sews a hoodie with a machine.
The clothes go directly to the frontline field hospitals.
– It is almost impossible to dress the seriously wounded without pain because they have burns. External fixation devices and amputated limbs also make it difficult to get dressed, says the person in charge of distributing clothes Vadym Minenko.
Here you can see a soldier’s greeting to the seamstresses from the field hospital, where he is wearing the shorts they sewed.
Vadym Minenko shows what amputees’ clothes are based on. There is a creak as he rips the hoodie open at the seams.
The hoodie can almost be torn to pieces, because the seams are attached to each other with Velcro. This way it is easy to get the clothes on, even if only one hand is used to put them on.
Dressing is possible with one hand
Large-scale sewing of clothes for soldiers who lost their limbs started when friends from Dnipro Kseniia Samoilitš and Maryna Palchenko received a request to prepare clothes for the wounded.
– This is how Shveina Rota or “Sewing Company” was born, says Kseniia Samoilytš.
Thanks to the adhesive attachment, soldiers who have lost their limbs are also able to put on their clothes themselves.
Kseniia Samoilytš coordinates seamstresses and responds to hospital orders, while Maryna Palčenko is responsible for organization and delivery of materials.
Almost everything is handled through social media, and there the sewing hobby spreads all over Ukraine and abroad.
In the beginning, there were 30 seamstresses involved, but now the ranks of the sewing company already have more than five hundred volunteers. The youngest seamstresses are schoolchildren and the oldest is 102 years old.
Formulas spread on social media. The sewists receive fabrics, threads and Velcro from donors.
On the walls are pictures and greetings sent by soldiers from field hospitals. Those who fought as volunteers in Bahmut also received help Yuriwho lost his leg to shrapnel from a Russian projectile.
– Juri’s clothes had to be torn off so that he could be cared for, says Samoilytš.
Here you can see how social media influencer Sofiia Krupa demonstrates on Instagram how a “little thing” makes it easier for wounded Ukrainian soldiers to dress.
“Every wounded person must look valuable”
The sewing machine also sings in the suburbs of Kyiv. Thirty Iryna Bogdanova joined the ranks of the sewing company about a year ago.
Velcro-fastened boxers are born in an instant. They go to a wounded soldier on the front.
– Everyone in a hospital bed should look dignified. They made it out alive, but the dressing is no longer possible. They should not be naked but wearing clothes, Bogdanova reasons.
Most of the fabrics come from donors, but Bogdanova also buys materials herself. He wants the clothes to be fashionable – the wounded are young soldiers his age.
– I get requests for different designs, says Bogdanova.
The soldiers proudly show off their new clothes. Iryna shows the fashion show made by the soldiers on Instagram. The catwalk is a hospital corridor.
Finnish Tikkakoski to the rescue
There is an even greater need for clothes towards winter. At the same time, there is growing concern about power outages when Russia is bombing energy plants.
According to Iryna Bogdanova, everything has been prepared for.
He proudly displays the pedal sewing machine standing in the corner of the room.
– I have an assistant here if the electricity goes out. My mother and many other seamstresses have the same, says Bogdanova.
The machine looks familiar. On the side it says: Made in Finland. The pedal sewing machine from the Tikkakoski factory is now serving in the ranks of a Ukrainian sewing company.