The Tatreez Forest: Stitching Palestinian Heritage is a community project co-developed by the Tatreez Collective and The Arab British Centre.
In 2024, we launched the project to bring Palestinian textiles closer to the public through active participation. Through workshops in museums across England and a downloadable stitching guide shared on social media, we invited people to explore historic collections of embroidered Palestinian garments and learn Tatreez for themselves. Participants stitched their own panels and contributed them to a growing collective artwork.
We set out to create a series of Tatreez cypress trees – a powerful symbol of hope and resilience in Palestinian culture. Each piece would bring together individually stitched patterns inspired by the museum collections we saw, including motifs of trees, birds, and vases. But as our digital call-out spread, individual stitchers and community groups also began contributing their own designs.
Within a year, over 400 panels arrived from 15 countries, representing thousands of hours of stitching and showcasing a kaleidoscope of patterns. The final tapestries, assembled by volunteers and on display here, showcase three cypress tree symbols which are attributed to Tatreez local to Hebron, a city in the West Bank, and Isdud, a Palestinian village which was ethnically cleansed in 1948. A short film documenting the project, an array of embroidered panels and a selection of letters from contributors are also exhibited.
The Tatreez Forest is more than a display of textiles. It is a living archive of community engagement, cultural preservation, and collective storytelling. Through this display, we invite audiences to experience Palestinian embroidery not only as heritage but as a contemporary act of connection and resistance.
Downloadable Stitching Guide
Download now!
This open call is now closed but you can still download our Stitching Guide for instructions on how to Tatreez and to access the patterns we selected for the project. Simply fill in the details below to get the download link.
Stitching Guide
Museum Workshops
Register now
To help us grow our collective artwork, we’re headed to five museums across England to run practical workshops exploring the history and process of Tatreez.
Why Cypress Trees?
Cypress trees have a symbiotic relationship with southern Palestine, with the shade they provide being vital in protecting women working outside. With distinct variations from Al Khalil, Yaffa, Ramallah, Gaza, & Bir Al Saba – look to many Tatreez designs and you’ll be sure to find a Cypress tree within.
Cypress trees are a powerful symbol of hope and resilience in Palestinian culture
We created three (at least!) cypress trees out of your contributions to this community artwork.