Tatreez Quilt Project

The Tatreez Quilt Project explored traditional and ancestral craft practices of naturally dyeing, embroidery and quilting through the artistic practices of three artists: Nimra Bandukwala, Ala’ Al-Thibeh (founder of Tatreez Studios) and Hanan Thibeh. Together, the artists facilitated a gathering of 6-9 participants every two weeks at Waterloo Park over the summer of 2025 to embroider and create a community quilt, fostering an intimate yet public space for knowledge-sharing, storytelling, food, and a slow collective labour of love.

A response to living in times of urgency and uncertainty where everything around us is shifting faster than we can process, quilts become a visual archive of generational memory, a gathering of people at a particular time and place, and a testament of collective care in the face of oppression and genocide.

This project invited community members with Tatreez experience to slow down, stitch stories, while collectively imagining liberated futures from Palestine to Turtle Island. The quilt was inspired by the popular Arabic phrase قتل الزهور لن يؤخر الربيع  (“Killing the flowers will not delay spring”), and in response to what happens when the flower is cut but the roots remain, the beauty and resilience that emerges from the rubble, and what the land has witnessed.

Nimra dyed the fabric squares using oak gall and alum as a mordant, and with plants that are found in Palestine, including pomegranate peels, sumac berries, coffee, cochineal, and onion skins. Ala’ brought her knowledge of Tatreez and guided participants in choosing patterns and cross-stitching. Hanan guided the group through the process of designing the quilt and hand quilting the stitched pieces.

This project was supported by the Ontario Arts Council and OPIRG Guelph.