Here is another Palestinian cross stitch piece from Dr. Shirazi’s collection. I absolutely love the warm colors and the geometric motifs.

The stitches are tiny and careful. The stitcher used the variegated thread to great effect.

A lot of these motifs were in the book about Palestinian embroidery that I reviewed in an earlier post, if you’re interested in making your own.

The back of this piece is unbelievably neat. It’s just as pretty (or maybe prettier) as the front! Look at this:

This is one of a special series of posts based on the embroidery collection of Dr. Faegheh Shirazi, from The University of Texas at Austin. Her research is on “textiles, dress, gender identity discourse, and material culture in the Middle East; the meanings of veiling; rituals and rites of passage as they relate to material culture.” Over the years she has collected a number of examples of embroidery from around the world, and has very kindly allowed me to photograph them for my blog.