Rafaela

Embroidering

Photos & Interview by Will Sertorio

If we designers spend all day creating on screens (and now terminals), why are we never fully satisfied? And why do manual hobbies feel like the missing piece?

This is a series of visual essays I put together trying to answer those questions. Portraits and interviews with digital designers, and the hands-on hobbies they keep.

Meet Rafaela.
UX Researcher, embroiders for friends and family.

A smiling woman with glasses and dark hair holds a framed embroidery piece depicting a person, butterflies, and flowers. She wears a white top and colorful bird-patterned pants against a plain white wall.

How did you start, and why this hobby?

So, let’s see. I always liked manual things a lot, since I was a kid. Every time I went to Rio Preto to visit my great-grandmother, she tried to teach me crochet, so I think that’s the oldest record I have of being interested in this kind of thing. And then at that specific time, 2015, I already knew about the courses at SESC (a popular culture and art workshop in Brazil) and I was interested, but I could never go until I got laid off. And then in this situation of a lot of sadness and wanting to think about what I was gonna do with my life and all that, the sign-ups for the creativity workshops were opening. And there was this free embroidery course with Flávia Lhaser and I managed to sign up. I got there early to wait in line, sign up, and that’s how the embroidery started.

I can’t really say what pulled me toward this specific hobby, but I think it was a mix of being interested in things made with thread, with looms and stuff like that, and the fact that there was this course open at that moment. So I think it was kind of the interest and the opportunity at the same time. But later I ended up doing several courses in ceramics, macramé, porcelain painting, woodworking, marquetry. So I kept exploring other courses too after I finished that one.

An elderly woman with glasses and short grey hair sits crocheting a white yarn piece. Next to her, a young girl with dark hair and bangs rests her head on her hand, looking down intently at the woman's hands working.

Rafaela learning to crochet with her great-grandmother. (Source: Rafaela's personal archive)

If your work is already creative, why do you need a creative hobby?

Actually I don’t see my work as exactly creative work because I think that, even though I need to create things there, I still have a lot of specific demands and little boxes I have to check. So even though it’s creative, I think I only really get to be creative and do what I want the way I want with embroidery.

And then I think there’s also this thing of doing something off the screen, which for me is really important, to do things with my time that don’t involve being in front of the computer or something with technology. So even though I use the computer in my process, it’s really important for me to be able to do things with my hands.

A wooden drop-down secretary desk holds a monitor, a laptop on a stand, a keyboard, and a mouse. The surrounding space features a built-in bookshelf filled with items, alongside several framed pictures on a white wall.

An assortment of craft supplies sits on a wooden floor in the sunlight. Items include a cardboard box filled with colorful embroidery floss and yarn, a fabric bin with blue cloth, and two plastic organizers filled with beads and threads.

Her home office space (left) and sewing tools (right).

What do you do to keep your hobby alive in your routine? (ex: put it on the calendar, set a goal, etc)

Well, in practice, in practice really, I only embroider these days when there’s some order or some gift I wanna give to someone. So, what I do sometimes is make something up, like, I know some friend is gonna have a baby, or someone’s birthday is coming up, and then I make up that I wanna give an embroidery as a gift to someone, because that puts a date on me and guides me, so I don’t leave it aside. I’ve had lots of ideas to make things, not tied to a gift, like, I don’t know, a series of embroideries for me to sell later or exhibit somewhere, but I can never do it exactly because I don’t have that goal, that demand, someone who’s counting on it. So for me it’s really hard, actually, to keep this hobby alive, but I think that’s how I like it too. I prefer not to have something fixed; that’s exactly why I see it as a hobby and not as a profession.

A woman with long dark hair and glasses sits in a black chair, focusing intently on embroidering a design inside a wooden hoop. She wears a white top and colorful patterned pants, with a wooden trunk and plants in the background.

What do you do when you get stuck or lose the will?

If it’s an order, I don’t have a choice, I have to get unstuck somehow. And then what I do, I go creating, I go writing down some key dates in my calendar: by such and such day I have to have done such a thing, by such day I have to move forward this much, so I make sure I’m not gonna miss the delivery date. But if it’s something for me, or something I’m not gonna give as a gift, but it’s a surprise, the person doesn’t know, or whatever, and I get stuck, I leave it aside, stop for a bit and come back later. I try not to force it too much, exactly because I see this hobby as this place of not being a place of a lot of pressure. Even the name of my embroidery page is bordado torto(crooked embroidery), because I also don’t have that pressure to make something exactly perfect that checks all the boxes of what’s expected of something artistic. So I see it in this lighter way and I think that’s why I manage to keep it up for so many years. Because I take it this way, without so much pressure.

A light fabric sheet is clipped to an open laptop screen with two white clips. The fabric has blue hand-drawn sketches of dinosaurs and the name "Vicente." The laptop sits on a wooden table.

An acoustic bass and a guitar hang on a white wall next to a turntable on a cabinet. A shelf above holds decorative objects like a large horn, while leather stools and a woven basket rest below.

What would you say to someone who wants to start/pick up their hobby again?

It’s what I say every time I’ve taught: take off a bit of this pressure we have in our work. Not only do we work with design, but any job has pressure, has this thing of doing it right, doing it correctly, always evolving, and, anyway, this very meritocratic thing too. I see not only embroidery, but any creative matter, especially manual, as an opportunity to escape from that. So I talk a lot about this thing of not expecting the embroidery (or anything manual) to be beautiful, perfect. Whoever’s making it isn’t a machine; it’s a human. And then I think taking off a bit of that pressure of I have to: I have to do such a thing, I have to go down this path. Anyway, you don’t have to do anything. You just have to explore, do it in the way that feels good to you, and take off the pressure to achieve things.

I think a hobby is exactly for you to relax and explore other sides that you can’t at work. I think we can only do that if we take off that pressure of the well-made, of the perfect. That’s it.

A smiling woman sits in a black lounge chair on a patterned rug, working on embroidery. Behind her is a white wall unit filled with vinyl records, a television, a record player, instruments, and various decorative items.