Pilot case 05

Semne Cusute 

Embroidery
 Bucharest, Romania
Visit Semne Cusute ↗ Explore the pilot case
Pilot location
Location Bucharest, Romania
Areas Embroidery
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PILOT CASE 05
About the pilot

About Semne Cusute

Semne Cusute is a movement of women that share and teach traditional embroidery online.  Embroidery is a traditional craft in Romania, the birthplace of the network, that is traditionally  shared within the family, and thus has no official school or professional status.

Semne Cusute blends cultural preservation, sustainable fashion, community building, and education to promote and protect the heritage of the Romanian traditional shirt.  It highlights the intricate patterns and wisdom encoded in its design, showcasing it as a masterpiece of collective creativity.  It is a movement that convinced more than 53.000 persons to get actively involved into keeping the textile heritage alive.


Their project Needlework Chronicles creates more recognition for the value and cultural heritage of the craft with younger generations and craftspeople, educating craftspeople in marketability and how to differentiate themselves from machine-embroidered textiles.

Learn more about Semne Cusute ↗
SEMNE CUSUTE Semne Cusute (Sewn Signs) are a visual, universal language used by women in order to encode information, express their status and their vision of the world. 
Pilot case overview

Activities, results and impact

01
Pilot development

Activities

  • Online needle lace courses to introduce the public to topics related to the craft and how it fits into the wider textile crafts, cultural, socio-political, and historical context
  • Practical in person workshops focusing on needle lace techniques, from beginner techniques to more advanced ones
  • Define a capsule collection with 5 textile items that show how tradition and modernity can coexist
  • Exhibitions to show how needlelace has evolved and has been used on textiles
  • Create a Samples Album that will include needlework from traditional Romanian shirts as well as examples from other European and Global cultures in an effort to present the connections that these crafts have created over the centuries
02
Project outputs

Results

  • A network, which will be self-sustaining beyond Tracks4Crafts
  • Allowing inexperienced members to learn the basics of creating objects, plan their work and invest in materials
  • A virtual, collaborative space to bridge different needlework traditions, tell stories and document the craft not just as skill, but as a way of passing down information, identity, values and aspirations
03
Expected change

Impact

  • Create a multi-cultural model, bringing together and exploring traditional needlework techniques rooted in different regions within and beyond Europe

Needle lace course

Semne Cusute Association created an online needle lace course in 2024. The course is mainly aimed at craft practitioners interested in learning new skills, but can be watched by anybody since even the practical lessons are full of stories and legends about the craft and its history.

It starts as a journey into the history of needle lace from antiquity to the present day, discussing the evolution of lace in general and also the history of Romanian needle lace. The course explains how it all starts with a needle and a thread and how you can create luxury with few resources and a touch of talent. It contains 3 theoretical lessons, 9 practical lessons featuring essential techniques and a short end of year recap. The lessons are around 1-2 hours long each.

The course is bilingual, in Romanian and English. The course is available on the association’s website and on its YouTube channel.


Watch the playlist on YouTube ↗

Needle lace workshops

Practical workshops were organized as part of the educational program, focusing on needle lace techniques, from beginner techniques to more advanced ones. The in person workshops were created to work together with the online courses and the digital patterns. The students can use all of the educational methods together or mix and match according to their needs.

Semne Cusute Association organized two intensive workshops in Bucharest in October 2025 and one in Constanța in March 2025. The participants got the chance to practice needle lace techniques, discover the history of needle lace and understand how the techniques could be used for traditional garments or modern items. In Constanța they were also able to see up-close examples of needle lace from the collection of the Museum of Folk Art. 

Several informal workshops were also organized in March 2024 in Belgium at the Ambacht in Beeld Festival.be and in Bucharest in June 2025. These served as an introduction to needle work and were aimed at beginners with little to no experience with the craft.

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Embroidery diary

Making a traditional Romanian shirt might seem daunting. The Embroidery Diary is meant to make everything clear and easy. Anyone can follow the steps needed to make a luxurious Romanian traditional shirt. Each week Semne Cusute Association shows the progress made on the shirt as well as tips for those interested in making something similar and interesting stories related to the craft. From choosing the design and materials to cutting the fabric, making all the embroidery by hand and then stitching all the pieces together with special techniques. This series is available in English on the Semne Cusute YouTube channel.


Needle work chronicles on YouTube

Discussions about crafts, needlework, heritage, tradition with Semne Cusute Association were posted on YouTube starting from 2024. The videos in English and Romanian feature guests from the Semne Cusute community and cover a variety of topics. Their goal is to share stories about the craft that go beyond the techniques used. Viewers get a chance to understand the wider context in which needle work and traditional Romanian textile crafts were practiced historically and in the present. Several videos also cover Semne Cusute’s involvement in Tracks4Crafts and the progress made throughout the project.

 
 
 

Watch the playlist on YouTube ↗

The Danubian-Italian Shirt: Bringing Heritage into today’s world

aditional shirts from the south of Romania. Designed to be comfortable, adaptable and easy to personalise, it combines a wearable form with historic needle-lace techniques originating from the Black Sea and Danube regions.

The concept encourages makers to explore heritage through practice: selecting patterns, working with fine fabrics, applying embroidery and needle lace, and creating a garment that reflects both tradition and individual creativity. Rather than treating heritage as something stuck in the past, the shirt invites people to integrate it in the present and wear it, adapt it, repair it and pass its knowledge on.

A practical creation guide provides technical advice and more than 50 embroidery patterns contributed by the Semne Cusute community. Makers can also access additional needle-lace designs and digitised embroidery patterns to support the creation of their own Danubian-Italian shirt.

Explore the resources:
Digitized embroidery patterns to use for your shirt: https://semnecusute.com/product-category/modele-de-ii-si-camasi/dunarene-danubian/



Needle lace course

The start of a craft: https://semnecusute.com/descopera-istoria/

Hanging on a thread: https://semnecusute.com/descopera-bibiluri/

Connecting structures: https://semnecusute.com/descopera-cheite/

Renaissance of Renaissance: https://semnecusute.com/descopera-renasterea/




"Needlework Chronicle" Exhibition

Presented by the Romanian National Commission for UNESCO and the Semne Cusute Association, the Needlework Chronicle exhibition took place from 2 to 30 September 2025. The exhibition invited visitors to look beyond the visible surface of the traditional Romanian shirt and discover the craftsmanship hidden inside.

By presenting together the historic shirts and those made in the present, the exhibition explored each stage involved in creating a Romanian shirt, from fabric and zero-waste cutting methods to colours, textures and decorative techniques. The 3 sister families of techniques are explored: stitching, embroidery and hem embellishments.

Through this practical and educational approach, visitors were encouraged to understand traditional garments not only as cultural objects, but also as sources of knowledge, creativity and inspiration for their own craft projects.



Oya / Hem Embellishments: A Traditional Practice of Beautification

Romania, together with Albania and Türkiye, submitted the multinational nomination dossier “Oya / Hem Embellishments: A Traditional Practice of Beautification” for inscription on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in March 2026.

The Semne Cusute Association had a central role in this initiative. As part of the Tracks4Crafts project it identified and analysed representative heritage objects from Romanian and international museum collections, it researched needle work techniques and connected with local communities of practitioners. This research helped document the historical continuity, regional diversity and cultural significance of traditional hem-embellishment techniques.



Needlework Chronicles Instagram

In order to document all the activities and discoveries made throughout the Tracks4Crafts project The Semne Cusute Association created the @needlework_chronicles instagram page. Here they gathered in chronological order their involvement in the project through photos and short texts.

Their goal was to archive in one place this very important chapter in for the association and inspire others.