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How can crochet benefit your mental health? Read now!
To celebrate World Mental Health Day, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sheila (@/shylasvsyoga on Instagram), a passionate crochet artist whose journey with yarn crafts has been deeply intertwined with her mental well-being.
Sheila’s passion for crocheting was sparked by her grandmother and passed down through generations. After learning the basics as a child, she took a long hiatus but rediscovered her love for the craft during the pandemic in 2021. With more time at home, Sheila not only revived her crocheting skills but also learned macrame, creating beautiful home ornaments. This renewed enthusiasm led her to take on larger projects, including designing stylish summer clothes.
Join us as we delve into Sheila’s inspiring story and explore how crocheting has positively impacted her mental health.
Can you share how you first got into crocheting and what inspired you to start?
”I started knitting from a very young age, my grandmother always had things woven at home, tablecloths, sweaters... and she taught my mother how to knit and she taught me when I was about 6 years old. She made me knit small samples and sent me to make squares with different stitches, so I learned. I spent many years without knitting and due to lack of time or different hobbies that I had in adolescence and I resumed weaving in 2021 when the pandemic began. We had so much time at home to do things that I resumed crocheting and learned to make macrame to make ornaments at home. I went back to doing big crochet projects and that’s where it all started, king clothes for that summer of 2021.”
How has engaging in crochet crafts impacted your overall well-being?
”For me, sitting and knitting anywhere is a moment of peace, tranquility, creativity and that I enjoy a lot. It’s time to develop my ideas, my future projects with the fabric and a way to create a sustainable fashion and to make people see that the fabric is not just a thing of grandmothers and boring garments, but that all the possibilities that there are now to obtain materials and combine them with each other is as if they made inside me enter a state in which I abstract from everything and enjoy that moment, being a moment of meditation and abstraction from the problems outside, something that makes that moment a perfect break.”
What advice would you give to someone who is new to crochet/yarn crafts and looking to use it as a tool for mental wellness?
”That they do not force themselves to do difficult things at the beginning, everything takes a learning and the path that you continue to learn step by step is something necessary to find your style and to learn from your mistakes and your skills when it comes to knitting. I always recommend that they see a lot of fashion, that they follow many accounts of people who knit with different styles to inspire and challenge themselves. And above all, have a lot of patience with yourself, not everything comes out the first time and sometimes mistakes are what make us learn something new. And above all that they take care of their posture when knitting and their hands, it is our most valuable tool.”
How do you balance your social media presence with maintaining your mental health, especially when sharing your craft projects?
”Lately I am very concerned about the issue of copies because I am seeing that many content creators use the projects of other creators to create their garments and it is something that does not follow the philosophy I follow, so I am increasingly careful in sharing certain things for my mental health and to preserve designs that in the future may be part of my collection, something that costs a lot of time, creativity and effort. Many times it is complicated to be able to record all the steps of a project and sometimes not having videos or photos of the process makes me wonder if it has deserved to do that garment without recording anything of the process, but that happened to me at the beginning, now I feel comfortable with the content I record and that gives me time to prepare with the time I have and combining it with my yoga practice and my daily life.”
Can you describe a particular project that was especially meaningful to you and why?
”The statement dresses I’ve been designing lately. For me they are a piece that from beginning to end nourishes me as a designer, as a creative, as a content creator and as a person. They give me wings to continue creating and designing, every minute that passes I have a thousand ideas in my head that I would love to capture in one of my dresses and that is exactly what makes me smile when I have a new design in mind and I am sure of the details and the material that I am going to use for it, at that moment I say, let’s get to work ... and that’s where the magic begins.”