THOBNA: Reclaiming Palestinian Dresses in the Diaspora

By Wafa Ghnaim. In "THOBNA: Reclaiming Palestinian Dresses in the Diaspora," Wafa Ghnaim celebrates messages of freedom, resistance and liberation embedded in Palestinian embroidery produced after the 1948 Nakba. Written and published exactly five years after her first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (2018), Ghnaim moves from documenting the oral history and tatreez patterns passed down to her by her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, to cultivating a reclamation process for identifying and rescuing Palestinian dresses in the diaspora in “THOBNA.”

THOBNA includes:

A detailed analysis of contemporary Palestinian dress styles after 1948.

10 rescued Palestinian dresses in North America, and the important stories they hold.

Inclusive guidance on how to tatreez, that considers aging hands and limited budgets.

Detailed diagrams on three methods of cross stitch that reflect historic Palestinian technique, waste canvas application, running stitch, back stitch and more.

Four color palettes that cover ancient, traditional, modern and contemporary colors matched to those most commonly used at the time.

47 pages of cross stitch patterns focusing on Palestinian resistance movements from the 1980s onward, including two Palestine maps, 50 Palestinian villages in Kufic script, six chest panels, and much more.

A glossary of terms in Arabic and English related to Palestinian embroidery and textile traditions.

A robust bibliography that references the most significant resources in Palestinian embroidery.

Embroidery from the Textile Research Centre (Leiden), Tiraz Centre (The Widad Kawar Collection), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the Palestinian People, and from the author’s collection.