Designing Handicraft Garments from Scratch

You will begin the course knowing the professional career between stitches of Gabriela Martínez, who will tell you how she decided to dedicate herself to textile and wearable art through her Ophelia & Antelmo project. He will share his philosophy towards embroidery and the different ways in which he applies it. He will also explain his main influences and visual sources of inspiration, which can vary from artists to compositions and colors that he finds in his day to day.

You will learn to choose a color palette with Gabriela's method, with which you will start from a base that you will gradually modify until you find the final color. Through the technique of collage make different sketches combining colors and seeing all the possibilities you have to choose one, which will be the piece you will work for your final project. Then you will see how to create organized textures with movement to plan the distribution of your embroidery.

Once you have defined the final design of your piece, you will know the essential materials and tools to make it a reality. You will know all about resistant fabrics for embroidery, the two types of scissors that you will use, the thread and the needles with which they always work in Ophelia & Antelmo. In addition, you will have tips for when you go shopping, to translate your design into fabric and thread and know how much material you really need.

Gabriela will give you a brief introduction to embroidery. It will explain to you why its textures and type of embroidery invite meditation and will show you the different types of assemblies that you can do with your pieces. Then you will begin to release your hand and practice the stitches of rice, continuous and fan line, embroidering three 10x10 cm samples.

You will discover the basic principles of cutting to cut the pattern correctly. You will learn to mark the guides on the fabric to carefully follow your design and leave the seam allowances free of embroidery. Then you will start embroidering the garment following Gabriela's advice carefully, you will see how to make the hems and embroidery stitch to join all the pieces and, finally, form your garment.

At the end of this course you will know how to design and embroider a garment or piece of textile art with unique finishes, textures and colors.