Syrian Embdroidery

I have been working- really- I am making a wrap- kind of quilted- well more stitched really, but the batteries in my camera are flat so i can't show you.

Given that the situation in the middle east looks disastrous i thought I would share
these delightful naive embroideries made by women from a small village in Northern Syria. The women who make these live in the beehive huts I have shown in an earlier post. They make these embroideries for sale through an organisation called Anat which is the brain child of a German woman, Heike Weber who now makes her home in Damascus. There are also Palestinian refugees and other Syrian women in other areas who also make wonderful shawls and dresses which you will see if you visit the site. The women have been able to earn an income which has seen the women gain economic ascendency in their village and assume the decision making roles . Apparently one of their first purchases with this income is usually a tv.

I wanted to show them because these women have very little- certainly no stashes , no threads to speak of except what is supplied to create the embroideries, no dyes, no sewing machines with the latest computerised gizmos, no quilterly gadgets or rulers and rotary cutters- most live in a one roomed bee hive hut which, if they are lucky has a fridge and the average number of children is over 6- they all live in this space. And yet they make these lovely bright and charming embroideries. Yet these people with so very little will be the real victims- both physically and economically from al this warmongering. I am finding the world fairly unbearable at the moment.

I am worried about my friend Lima in Ramallah- she used to email me every second day but I haven't heard from her for two weeks. I know they moved to their house in the countryside feeling it was safer for their children and that she was having problems getting through the check points into Ramallah to get to work- as she was a east Jerusalem id holder- her husband and sons are west bank id holders- she had tried to get east Jerusalem id for her sons as she was born in East Jerusalem - but Israel refused to issue her children with the asked for id because it was said the children do not take the identity of the mother- which I found a rather odd irony .