Seventeen Embroidery Techniques from Palestine: An Instruction Manual

The first technical manual to be published on Palestinian embroidery, this book catalogs a wide range of techniques used in the dressmaking in the Historic Palestine and aims to revive the stitches that have fallen out of use today, such as tahriri (couching) and manajel (binding). Each technique is provided with background information collected from older embroiderers in Palestine and the Diaspora, and a step-by-step, illustrated instruction for easy learning. The book also features essays on historical, contemporary, and technical aspects of the embroidery in Palestine, and photographs of the traditional costume collection at the Birzeit University Museum in the West Bank. The book is a project of Sunbula, a Jerusalem-based fair trade organization, and is made through years of museum and field research. It is also an unofficial sequel to Tania Tamari Nasier and Widad Kamel Kawar’s 1992 publication, “Palestinian Embroidery: Traditional ‘fallahi’ Cross-stich”. It is an English and Arabic bilingual publication.