🧵✨ Reflections and Recent Writings on Palestinian Embroidery

Second Intifada Dress (2000-2005), pearl cotton thread on machine-woven cotton fabric using a “shawaal” style dress cut. Maker Once Known. The Tatreez Institute Collection. Photograph by Chris Gale (2025)

Over the past couple of years, I’ve transitioned my work from teaching courses and projects, to researching and publishing on Palestinian embroidery and dress history. At the moment, my calling is in writing history. While I remain on hiatus from teaching, I’ve been reflecting on the urgent need to protect the integrity of our cultural knowledge, especially as misinformation about Palestinian embroidery spreads rapidly and widely online.

With so much content circulating on social media, it’s crucial to approach this work with care. Not everything shared is accurate, and some posts unintentionally erase or distort Palestinian cultural knowledge. Even when sources are cited, research is often misunderstood — a concern I’ve heard echoed by elders in my field, including Ms. Widad Kawar and Ms. Hanan Munayyer, who have witnessed their own work misrepresented.

If you share or teach about Palestinian embroidery — as an artist, educator, or platform holder — I urge you to see this as a collective responsibility to our ancestors and future generations. Citing sources, acknowledging Palestinian teachers, and making corrections when needed are acts of care that protect the integrity of our history and honor those who carried this knowledge before us.

Much of my recent work has focused on re-educating our community — including students, teachers, and artists — to prevent distortion and misunderstanding of intangible Palestinian cultural heritage. Oral traditions are a vital part of how embroidery knowledge has been carried through generations, and yet, without proper acknowledgment, these stories risk being lost or misunderstood. One of the Indigenous practices that has been diminished in diaspora is the simple but powerful act of naming your teacher — the person or people from whom you’ve learned. When you cite those who have taught you, you speak with their authority behind you, and you help ensure the chain of maternal oral transmission is unbroken. Currently, online, this chain is already broken.

Below, I’ve included a number of free resources to read, listen, and watch to help support the preservation of Palestinian embroidery and dress history — especially critical during this time of genocide.

My publications list can be found here, press videos and interviews here, and in the coming days, weeks, or months, it will expand with more resources again.