Embroidery: Clothing Repair
A course by Ofelia & AntelmoTextile Art Workshop
A course by Ofelia & Antelmo, Textile Art Workshop
Learn the Visible Mending technique and revive your garments using original embroidery pieces and patches that express your style
When something is broken, we usually fix it. So why not do the same with our clothes? That’s what Visible Mending is all about: mending any unused or damaged items of clothing so that they can stand the test of time, just as our grandmothers did before us. It’s not a new technique; it involves going back to the relationship we previously had with our garments to give them a new life and a fresh new style to go with it! Gabriela Martínez is an expert when it comes to embroidery and textile art, and has made a name for herself in the industry thanks to her project known as Ofelia & Antelmo.
In this course, Gabriela teaches you how to mend and give personality to your clothes, whether they’re ripped or stained, using stitches and patches. She teaches her technique from scratch and guides you through it step-by-step, showing you how to revive the garments that are gathering dust in your wardrobe into unique and special favorites.
This course complements her first course, Designing Handicraft Garments from Scratch, where she teaches how to manually design, embroider, and piece together textile garments.
What will you learn in this online course?
19 lessons & 16 downloads
What will we do in the course?
52 seconds
Prepare your garment!
20 minutes, 35 seconds
Texture sketching
20 minutes, 8 seconds
Flat stitches 1
20 minutes, 41 seconds
Embossed stitches 1
12 minutes, 16 seconds
Knitting stitch 1
10 minutes, 17 seconds
What's included in this course?
Get to know Gabriela, her textile art project Ofelia & Antelmo, and how she started out in the embroidery field. She also shares where she draws inspiration from and her own personal philosophy on creating slow and sustainable textile pieces.
In the second unit, get familiar with the materials and the upcycling techniques that are easy to apply. Gabriela shows you how to use basic embroidery materials to prepare, select, and start mending your clothing. Start practicing by loosening up your hand with pencil and paper, before moving onto embroidery, creating basic patterns that are similar to what you’ll embroider to help visualize the outcome.
Practice with scraps of material and create a stitch sampler that you can later transform into patches. Gabriela guides you through a series of different types of stitches (running stitch, flat stitch, raised stitch, and lattice stitch), so you can create beautifully textured compositions.
Start repairing the garment you chose, applying the stitches to the damaged textile, creating interesting compositions through patches and visible mending techniques. See how to create an internal patch (under the rip), as well as external and camouflage patches. Gabriela mends her own item along with you so that you can observe each step along the way, demonstrating how to incorporate left-over embroidery scraps and showing you a range of options and techniques that you can try out.
Lastly, learn how to care for your mended garments—especially if you’ve embroidered heavily in one area—and get some final advice about how to apply what you’ve learned to other items.
What is this course's project?
Mend an item of damaged clothing using embroidery techniques and create patches to revamp an unused piece, giving it a fresh new look.
Projects by course students
Who is this online course for?
To all those seeking to develop a deeper relationship with their garments and to give them a new style. Those with an interest in embroidery as a way to express their creativity and personality will also enjoy this course.
Requirements and materials
Previous experience with embroidery is not required to take the course, as Gabriela starts with the basics.
As for materials, you will need blunt needles of different sizes, different colored mouliné threads, the items of clothing you want to mend, textile scraps (plain, patterned, etc,), embroidery scissors and fabric scissors, an embroidery hoop, tailor’s chalk, pins, paper, and pens or colored pencils.
Reviews
- 2 months ago
Excelente curso. Las instrucciones son muy claras y están explicadas paso a paso, lo que facilita mucho el aprendizaje incluso para quienes comienzan desde cero. Me gustó especialmente que deja espacio para la creatividad y no se limita a repetir una técnica. Los ejemplos visuales y las demostraciones ayudan enormemente a comprender el proceso y a aplicar las ideas en proyectos propios. Muy recomendable.
- 2 months ago
Es genial, lo recomiendo ampliamente.
- 5 months ago
Me encantó este curso, útil y creativo
- 6 months ago
un cours très sympa et très bien fait qui donne envie de s'y mettre tout de suite et de ne plus quitter son aiguille... Merciiii Ofelia
- claudializetPLUS6 months ago
Recomiendo este curso le entendi muy bien a la profesora me gusto mucho.
Textile art is the starting point of Gabriela's process, in which she explores all her ideas for colors, textures, stitches, and effects, then seeks to bring them to life in handmade garments with wear-resistant finishes and stitches. Her main motivation is that quality prevails over quantity, and so she creates pieces that can be inherited as a form of protest at the speed at which the world moves today.
Content
- U1
Introduction
- Hello!
- Influences
- What will we do in the course?
- U2
Repair our relationship with fashion
- Collection of materials
- Prepare your garment!
- Texture sketching
- U3
Patchwork sample
- Sashiko Ofelia & Antelmo version
- Flat stitches 1
- Flat stitches 2
- Embossed stitches 1
- Embossed stitches 2
- Knitting stitch 1
- Knitting stitch 2
- U4
Embroidery as a mending tool
- Preparation of Patches and Compositions
- Internal Patches
- External Patches
- Camouflage Patches
- U5
Long live our garments!
- Care
- Other Applications
- FP
Final project
- Embroidery: Clothing Repair
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FAQs
Sashiko is a Japanese embroidery technique that strengthens and decorates damaged garments using geometric stitches. It's commonly used to repair jeans, t-shirts, and other clothes by adding visible patches and decorative patterns that extend the life of the garment.
This is an intermediate-level course, perfect for those who already have basic sewing or embroidery skills and want to deepen their knowledge of textile repair and creating unique patterns.
You'll need damaged clothes, fabric scraps, embroidery threads (like mouliné), needles, scissors, an embroidery hoop (optional), and fabric markers. The course will guide you on choosing the right materials for each technique.
You'll learn to repair clothes using traditional methods like sashiko and slow stitch, create geometric patterns, apply visible patches, transform garments into accessories, and develop your own visual style inspired by nature.
The course teaches how to use embroidered patches and decorative stitches to cover stains or holes, incorporating the damage into the design and personalizing the garment with appealing textures and colors.
Yes, you'll learn how to reuse and transform worn clothes into new accessories like bags by applying patches, embroidery, and creative fabric assemblies.
Stitches taught include running stitch, rice stitch, satin stitch, and raised stitches, along with creating geometric patterns and organic textures inspired by nature.