New Delhi, May 10 -- I haven't done this in years. Decades, if school projects don't count. Needle in one hand, I try to remember how. My first few stitches don't land right. My flower looks less like a bloom, more like a blob.

Beside me, a white-haired woman with bright cheeks and the calm authority of someone who has fixed many things in life watches for a moment. She gently takes the hoop from my hands, unpicks a few stitches, and begins again. Her fingers move fast. "I've done this since I was a girl," says Maria Hajdue, smiling. "All of us have."

We are in the workshop of Matyodesign in Tard, a village of around 1,000 people in northeastern Hungary. Here, embroidery isn't just a hobby; it is an amalgam of memory, skill, income and ...