Embroidery is liberating and subversive. Women have known about it since the 16th and 17th centuries, but Loly Ghirardi (Mrs. Lylo on Instagram, with 109,000 followers) discovered it at the age of 35, while trying all sorts of tricks to overcome the wait for a very long assisted reproduction The process included three egg donation treatments and three in vitro fertilization treatments, 34 ultrasounds, 12 pregnancy tests, 24 ovarian stimulation injections, 38 hours of therapy, one ectopic pregnancy, one tubalectomy and three spontaneous abortions. Twelve years of fear and frustration.
To ease the anxiety caused by her attempts to become a mother, Ghirardi (Buenos Aires, 1975) signed up for everything: skating, learning to play the ukulele, crocheting… But only by embroidering her head and body She managed to become a mother free, at least for the moments when his two hands danced from stitch to stitch and his busy mind did not go beyond the pattern he had to paint on a canvas stretched on a stretcher.
Let's say it as quickly as possible: Diary of an Embroiderer (Lumen 2023), the book that tells the story of Loly Ghirardi, is not a fable about personal improvement, there is no morality or sublimation of needlework, no morality is derived from it from an ethical perspective: “I hate messages from Mr. Wonderful,” he warns. Ghirardi is a woman with a wound that is always with her and who loves to talk about “rescue.” When she decided to stop treatments, she was exhausted and depressed, like anyone who gives up on a long-held path in life. The embroidery saved her, but it did not erase the pain, it simply showed her another path to contentment. Which is not a small thing. She prefers to say that she's coping better than before, that not being a mother isn't the only thing that defines her, that she's come to terms with what happened to her. He didn't go through it or overcome it. She's not a warrior, definitely an embroiderer.
Embroidery is powerful because it is considered gentle and harmless. For centuries it has been a work linked to love and duty, always on the margins of the arts, on the border between domestic work and crafts. British historian Rozsika Parker noted in her book The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine: “The historical hierarchical division of the arts into fine arts and crafts has been a major cause of the marginalization of women's work.”
Between threads and stitches, women created strong social and community bonds. Free from any sense of guilt – in short: they did their work – they gained time and space for themselves, they learned to read, since they had secretly embroidered the alphabet since the 16th and 17th centuries, and in the process recognized themselves in their borrowings and submissions . .
But Loly Ghirardi, a graphic designer by profession, had none of that in mind when, at the age of 35, she passed by a place in Barcelona, where she has lived for more than two decades, and some extravagant colors impressed her like a magnet on the door. Inside sat silent women, their hands busy and focused on stitching together their drawings. No one seemed interested in asking the intrusive questions that seemed to be quizzing them everywhere. How old are you? What are you waiting for? Why don't you have children? You'll miss the rice. The fact that no one knew her was a powerful attraction for a woman who was tired of answering quietly. She walked into the store and signed up for her first embroidery class. “I had too many fears and embroidery carried me away and calmed me down,” she remembers. At five years old, she was the one teaching. “At first I didn't tell the truth, I said that I embroidered to keep my hands busy and escape the screens, then I began to reconcile with myself and tell everything, I began to see that people let their guard down” and share their stories. Ms. Lylo was not a mother, but she has become an embroidery phenomenon followed by tens of thousands of people, with more than 50,000 students, men and women, in her Domestika classes.
For this photoshoot, she has an embroidered white blouse, her hair tied in pigtails, pop art nails and very red lips: an identity built in the darkest days to make her brain believe that she brings joy to his life had. It wasn't like that.
“I had to play this character because I wanted to feel like that. I thought this character could save me. It was like saying, “Let's have some fun.” The strange thing was that when the mood changed, she maintained her appearance and, amidst the euphoria of celebrating her new book, her braids began to unravel. “It's been a liberation and I'm becoming friends with my hair.” He pays excessive attention to his nails. “In the online courses, the cameras focused a lot on the hands, so I decided to take them seriously.” He shows his hands: “These are signing nails.”
Loly Ghirardi, with a blouse embroidered by her.Anna Huix
—Why did it take you so long to break up with motherhood?
– Because we have no borders. And then there is magical thinking. You hear stories of people who got it when they were no longer expecting it, and you think maybe the same thing will happen to you.
Ghirardi believes that the appeal of embroidery in 2024 is related to the search for well-being. “People want to do things that are good for them, and then they decide whether or not they learn something useful. Anyone who has never embroidered before and registers for the first course, which lasts three to four hours, will be surprised: time flies. And of course, at a certain age there is also the challenge of learning something new.”
—And what does embroidery teach?
—It's a master's degree in patience. It's 80%, the technique will eventually be learned with time and practice, but you have to learn to wait and forget that something is done in a single day. You cannot embroider for more than three hours at a time. You have to stop, rest, do something else and then start again. It's like therapy. You won't fill the shelf in an hour, you need eight. You can't run. You have to get comfortable with small progress.
Miss Lylo says there's nothing else you can do while embroidering. “Nothing. It's not compatible with multitasking. Both hands are very busy. You can't smoke. You can't pick up your phone. And then there's the concentration. If you lose concentration, you have to go back and do what you has done, undo. “I don't like it, I'd rather see where the thread takes me.” Her favorite stitch is the chain stitch – “I think it's a good staple for any wardrobe, it adds structure and I like, that the same stitch can be used to create an outline and a fill stitch” – and her advice for beginners is short and clear: “Buy quality threads that won't fade, things need to last a long time. Learn with non-stretch fabrics until you master the stitch. Edge not always on a white background. And like in life itself, you have to know how to stop it and put an end to it.”
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