Ukrainian traditional costume: embroider ...

Ukrainian traditional costume: embroidery - part 1

Mar 11, 2023

After I published the 1st article about Ukrainian female costume, I asked my readers what they would like to see next, and they suggested to write an article on Ukrainian embroidery.

After I dove into the topic I understood it's a really huge one!
Ukraine is a large country with many regions that historically developed their own styles and designs. I understood that a single article would be too much, so I'll try to show the variety of Ukrainian embroidery in several posts.

There are more than 100 traditional embroidery techniques and methods. I'll show only the most used ones.

Types of embroidery techniques:
- lacing (мережка),
- excision (вирізування),
- satin stitch (настилування, лиштва, гладь),
- stringing (низь, низинка),
- cross stitch (вишивка хрестиком),
- other types of embroidery.
I wrote the terms in Ukrainian in case you would like to search for the techniques in Google by yourself.

Lacing is called "merezhka" in Ukrainian, from "merezhivo" - "lace".

To make it, several weft threads are removed, remaining warp threads are hemmed at the edges, and then patterns are created with usage of a thread and a needle.

There is an example of a very simple lacing:

(source)
Here is a very thorough video tutorial on how to make a simple lacing.

Once I made a traditional Ukrainian shirt formy doll, using lacing and cross stitch.

There are more elaborate examples:

(source with tutorial)
Here is another very beautiful, still not too hard, "squares" lacing:

(source with video tutorial)
There are true gems, like this lacing on the wedding towel made in XIX in Chernihiv region:

(source)
Usage of lacing on the shirts:
On the sleeves:

(source)

(source)
On the bottom:

(source)

Parts of the shirt also were often joined with lacing techniques:

(source)

(source with video tutorial)

Excision
While lacing is done on a long strips of pulled out weft threads, excision is done in the middle of fabric, when a certain areas are hemmed, and then the middle is filled with embroidery on a few remaining threads.

(source with video tutorial)
This technique is used for shirts, tablecloth, etc.


(source)

(source)
It looks great on its own:

(source)
Or combined with other techniques:

(source)

Proceed to Part 2











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