Palestinian embroidery has long served as a record of place. A cypress tree or a band of geometric stitching can locate a garment in a particular village, and the knowledge behind it passed from woman to woman by sitting together and sewing. After 1948, patterns and techniques once tied to specific regions travelled and mixed, and for many displaced women embroidery also became a way to earn a living.
Dina Asfour is co-founder of The Tatreez Collective, a London-based Palestinian fashion brand that works with a cooperative of 15 artisans in Beit Liqya, near Ramallah. The collective brings traditional techniques into clothing made for everyday wear, and it reinvests its profits to create more paid work for the women who stitch each piece. Alongside its collections, the brand runs embroidery workshops and makes bespoke pieces with customers, keeping the craft open to anyone who wants to learn it or wear it. In A Living Stitch, Dina considers how a tradition rooted in memory can also be the foundation for a future.
Reversible Asymmetric Raw Silk Waistcoat by The Tatreez Collective
A Living Stitch
For generations, Palestinian tatreez has been a living language of pattern, place and memory. Worked through repeated stitches, its motifs have travelled across generations, adapting as the people who carry them have changed.
At The Tatreez Collective, the question is not only how to preserve this textile tradition, but how to make a future for the people who practise it.
The London-based Palestinian fashion and embroidery brand works with a cooperative of 15 artisans in Beit Liqya, near Ramallah. Together, they create clothing and accessories that bring traditional embroidery into contemporary wardrobes. Rather than reproducing historic garments, the collective explores how their techniques and motifs can become part of pieces designed for everyday life.
Each piece brings together different skills: choosing fabrics and garment shapes, planning motifs, hand embroidery and tailoring. The making process connects design decisions with the knowledge of the artisans, whose experience is central to the finished work.
Jellayeh Tatreez Cushion Cover – Handmade in Palestine.
For the collective, sustainability is not simply a question of fabric choice. It also means creating ongoing paid work, valuing skilled labour and reinvesting revenue into the training, materials and production capacity needed to sustain making in Palestine. The longer-term ambition is to help build a connected local fashion ecosystem in which design, embroidery, tailoring and production can grow together.
That approach changes what an embroidered garment represents. A motif is not just a decorative reference to heritage: it holds the time, knowledge and work of the person who stitched it.
Through contemporary collections and bespoke pieces, The Tatreez Collective treats Palestinian embroidery as a living practice with a future. Its garments tell a story not only of what has been passed down, but of what can still be built.”
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Image Credits:
Lead: An example of traditional Tatreez embroidery.
All images courtesy of The Tatreez Collective.