Some of proudest creations so far -- my son, here four months old, and the dress I worked on for about six months of my pregnancy. Yes, all the embroidery is mine. The dress is a composite of what might be seen in several different rural Palestinian villages. The hat has a veil which I had to remove in order to dance with my baby.

This dress is also seen in the photo below.

There's a local grocery store that has a wall of pictures of people all over the world holding their bags, and they give you a discount if you bring in a new place. We could call this somewhere Arabic, but it's actually in our friend Mukhtar Durr's tent at Pennsic. Lauren wears a wedding dress from the Hebron area with embroidered hat, veil, sleeves, and front and chest pieces, and Suleiman is in generic men's clothing.

The chestpiece of a dress in the style of those worn in Ramallah.

This is a thob'ob dress, or Palestinian double dress, with extended sleeves. It is made from about twelve yards of cotton with cotton embroidery. The sleeves are enormous angel-wing types and will drag on the ground if not put on top of my head and secured with a headband-tie, as I am wearing it in this picture. The entire dress is about four yards long and goes from the ground to my waist, is belted, then hangs down to my ankles, then comes back up to the shoulders.

Here is a Ghawazi outfit consisting of pants, undershirt, coat, turban, and hip wrap. This looks great on anyone of any size and shape and is very popular for dance clothing. I also make traditional Turkish and Persian outfits which are similar in many ways to this.

Me in a beledi. It is made of striped cotton with cotton pants underneath. The yoke I embroidered with white cotton, lapis beads, and freshwater pearls in a blackwork pattern. Not entirely traditional but very pretty. On my head is a black cotton scarf and around my hips is a fringed veil made of silkessence.

Here is my husband the drummer in generic middle-eastern men's clothing. This is not from any place or time in particular. He wears a black linen tunic and black heavy cotton straight-legged pants. Over this is a striped cotton aba and a striped wide cummerbund-type stomach wrap. His headscarf is tied afghani-style. He wears leather sandals and carries a darabuka, a ceramic drum with a skin head. This is often mistakenly called a dumbek, which is the name for the Turkish metal drum with the flat head and bolts on the sides.

A tassel belt with a tie in front and fat flying tassels all around with brass bells as an accent. (These belts are for sale! Check it out!)