*A Hundred Stitches Make a Canvas: How the Practice of Embroidery Relates to Forms of Life… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105162*

able to sew. In this sense, during the day, the natural daylight, free and abundant in the patio, gives an ideal spot for this job. During the night, the practice changes, requiring more effort to coordinate hands and eyes. Additionally, it becomes a more intimate affair, since it is done inside single rooms with or without company, and the surrounding darkness hinders the objects and fades the details of their scenery. The embroiderers thus depend on electricity and find the best way to get hold of a light source. Those who lived twenty years ago remember how there was no electricity in Atempa, and that diminished their productivity:

*For some, light is very important, and for others, it is saddening. Because those that already had some money began buying their electrical apparatuses like their televisions or their tape recorders. Before, it was with cassette tape. They began buying what they liked. They listened to music. But for others it was sad because they did not have the resources to buy. For some came a storm, and for others, happiness. One could work during the night with electricity because one could see more. Because then, one survived embroidering cloths. Some cloths you'd stitch flowers, and you start with a needle and sewing hoop. Before you could only see with daylight, because there was no light at night, and by candlelight it was too difficult to do those things. (R. Campos, personal conversation, 24 of April 2021).*

The testimony of the family makes evident that the arrival of electricity deepened social differences within the towns. Those that have electricity can dedicate more work hours and thereby obtain better remuneration. Those that cannot are unlikely to improve their productive capacity in quantity, time, and quality, and are often rejected by employers who seek to make their processes and investments more efficient.

**Figure 3.** *The practiced space.*

The space for this practice is not just one. We could discuss the ideal conditions for production in these spaces that are favorable to the purposes of action and facilitate work being done. We can think about space from the perspective that it is shaped by a person's own actions and objects, from their movement and displacement, rather than by space as a container [6], for it helps us perceive the overlaps between practices and their transformative capacity. De Certau affirms that "space is a practiced place" and that it is not univocal or stable ([7], pp. 117). This is similar to the Campos family's patio, where, throughout the morning hours, it functions as the space to hang clothes dry and as a sewing area, as a corral for the hens all day long, as a storage for corn and as a place to use the motor mill for preparing *nixtamal*. Just like this patio, with its various amounts of uses and applications, space is produced and transformed at every moment (**Figure 3**) [8].
