There has been a very long tradition of embroidery on clothing in the small villages of the fellahin, the Arab farmers, who settled in Galilee, Samaria, Judea and the narrow plain of the Mediterranean coast of what is now Israel, but none of it has survived from before the 19th century and in Galilee the tradition of embroidery had almost died out by the end of the 19th century.

Regional styles developed because women had very little contact outside their own area. They married men from their own social group and apart from helping in the fields, spent most of the time in their own village. In Galilee, women’s costume consisted of a headdress of a cap with a padded band bearing coins covered by one of several types of veil, a long coat with short sleeves worn over a white chemise and long pants, richly embroidered for weddings and special occasions. Cross-stitch, satin stitch, hem stitch and stem stitch were used on nearly every item and the embroidery was mainly geometric in character with few motifs but arranged in so many different ways that they gave the impression of being far more diverse. In southern Palestine women wore long dresses with either tight or long winged sleeves, a headdress with coins sewn into it, and a large veil worn over the headdress, all of which were embroidered. In Bethlehem the women worked free flowing curvilinear designs in couching with gilt and silk threads, which formed floral motifs. The motifs used were very similar to those used in Greece, Turkey and Persia.