In a café in Amman, Jordan, Palestinian embroidery is moving from pixel to fabric. Aseel Alshaer and Tasnim Alwal sit with needles, thread, and a laptop open to a grid pattern. It is the finished design Alshaer created digitally, titled the “Tree of Life”.
Their work reflects a broader shift in how tatreez is now preserved and shared. Motifs once passed hand to hand are increasingly translated into digital grids that can be saved, circulated online, and stitched anywhere — widening access for Palestinians in the diaspora and beyond.
“Tatreez started with rural women — falaheen,” Alwal explains. “Many did not know how to read or write, but they had an incredibly strong visual memory. They could look at something and translate it into a pattern — almost like pixel art. That was how designs were transferred.”
Today, Alwal teaches that same translation process using tools like FlossCross, a pattern-making programme that turns motifs into grid-based stitch charts. For Alshaer, digitisation is also a way of rescuing designs that survive only in fragments. She recalls finding a worn physical version of the “Tree of Life” motif through another embroiderer, photographing it, and later reconstructing what time had erased.
Both women stress that digitisation is only preservation if it is done carefully — with proper documentation, attribution, and cultural context — so patterns do not circulate as anonymous designs stripped of their origins.
Tirazain is an open-access digital archive dedicated to preserving Palestinian embroidery heritage. Created to address the lack of high-quality, affordable and accessible patterns — especially for communities excluded from museums and formal archives — it has digitised over 1,000 motifs into searchable, bilingual files. The platform preserves these designs while placing tatreez knowledge back into Palestinian hands, enabling new modes of learning, creation, and transmission.
“I digitise to preserve, to learn, to educate and to help this craft develop. I feel that this is the right way to go – most importantly, to give access to people who do not have access,” Alwal explains.
Alwal says she initially offered her lessons for free because there was little funding or institutional support for teaching tatreez. “It is our own effort to work on this,” she says, adding that her long-term goal is to build a college-level programme for the growing number of people who want to learn.
Beyond archives and pattern-making software, newer technologies — including AI-assisted design and three-dimensional visualisation — are beginning to expand how tatreez can be understood and used. Platforms like 3DTatreez introduce a different kind of interface: one that allows users to preview motifs on a garment in three dimensions before a single stitch is made, making tatreez easier to plan, personalise, and interpret as a wearable design rather than a flat pattern.
Across the continent in Florida, Zayne Shehadeh, a fifth-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Florida and the creator of 3DTatreez, arrived at digitisation from a different place. She did not grow up wearing thobes, but while selecting one for her sister’s henna night, she became frustrated with the process of choosing motifs, colours and layouts without being able to visualise how they would come together. That frustration became the foundation for the platform.
“I felt completely lost, and I hated how inefficient the process felt. It was like stepping into an entire world of cultural knowledge that I had never been taught,” says Shehadeh. “Pictures don’t do justice to something that’s meant to be worn and experienced in three dimensions.”
3DTatreez is, at its core, about agency; it allows users to experience the process of creating a thobe visually and intuitively. Shehadeh describes it as a platform where tatreez feels approachable and engaging rather than intimidating. “It’s almost game-like,” she says. “You’re experimenting, visualising, learning, but it’s also educational. You’re not just customising a garment; you’re learning the language of tatreez as you do it.”
For both Alshaer and Shehadeh, however, technology, no matter how advanced, remains a tool rather than a replacement. After a design is created digitally, the pattern still relies on skilled hands to bring it to life. “Technology does not eliminate embroidery; rather, it reformulates it so that it remains alive in an evolving world,” Alshaer states.
“I don’t want to touch the old design. I want to make something perfect, but I want to add a human touch. The left and right don’t need to be 100% the same.”
For Alshaer, the true connection still happens beyond the screen. While a digital pattern allows people to visualise the outcome, it is still a human hand that puts a needle to fabric, giving the piece its life.
“No matter how much technology or AI we use, the human touch is the most important. It always stands out.”
