We Could Charge You Less. It Would Mean Paying Her Less. We Refuse!

The choice behind every price tag

Across the tatreez and embroidery industry, it's common practice to pay artisans as little as $5-6 per DMC thread ball. A rate that, given that a single ball can take 3-4 full days to stitch, often works out to pennies per hour. This is the quiet norm many "heritage" brands rely on to keep prices low.

Deerah does NOT work this way. We pay our artisans a minimum of $15 per ball, plus a daily transportation allowance, on top of fair, transparent terms for every piece they complete. We could match the industry rate tomorrow and cut our prices. We won't, because that gap isn't margin we're protecting, it's a wage someone depends on.

When you see a price on a Deerah hand-embroidered product, a meaningful, intentional part of it exists specifically so the woman who made it is paid what her skill and time are actually worth.

It's not just a markup. It's hours.

Beyond the fair-pay commitment, you're also looking at a number of hours. Sometimes 40, sometimes 75, sometimes well over 200, spent by one woman, one needle, one thread, stitching a pattern that has been passed down through generations of Palestinian women before her.

There is no machine that can do what she does. There is no shortcut.

The math behind the thread

Tatreez is counted-thread embroidery. Every single stitch is placed by hand, counted against the weave of the fabric, with little margin for error. A single motif can take hours on its own. A full bodice of traditional patterns can take weeks. This work takes its toll on the eyes & vision too.

When we say a piece took 75 hours to make, we mean an artisan sat with that exact garment for the better part of two work-weeks, at Deerah's workshop, stitch by stitch, before it ever reached you.

Who's behind the needle

We work directly with Palestinian women, many from Baqaa & Hussein refugee camps in Jordan, who have inherited this craft from their mothers and grandmothers. For generations, this skill has been chronically underpaid, treated as informal "women's work" rather than the rigorous, technical craft it is.

Every Deerah piece is a deliberate correction to that history. No middleman, just a direct line between your purchase and the woman who made it.

Hand-embroidered vs. machine-embroidered: what you're actually paying for

We offer both, and we're upfront about the difference:

Machine-embroidered pieces use modern embroidery machines to recreate traditional motifs quickly and consistently. Beautiful, accessible, and a faithful nod to tatreez patterns at a lower price point for the price conscious.

Hand-embroidered pieces are stitched entirely by hand, motif by motif, with the kind of irregularity and depth that only a human hand produces. No two are ever fully identical. This is the difference between a print of a painting and the original.

Neither is "better". They serve different audiences, different moments, different budgets, different intentions. But the price difference between them isn't arbitrary. It's the literal difference between a machine's hour and a human's hundred hours.

What you're really taking home

A hand-embroidered Deerah piece isn't just a garment. It's:

A documented, wearable piece of Palestinian cultural heritage
Dozens of hours of skilled labor, fairly compensated
A one-of-a-kind object — your exact piece will never be repeated stitch-for-stitch
A piece that, with care, outlives trends and gets passed down, the way tatreez always has been

This is why we don't discount hand-embroidered pieces the way fast fashion discounts inventory. The price reflects the work. Always.