Inset embroidery on men's shirts from Turka District, Boiko Region, Ukraine

Hello all, 
I received a request for embroidery designs for the insets of men's shirts from the Boiko region. While you will occasionally find embroidery on the sleeves or shoulders of men's shirts in Ukraine, this is the exception rather than the rule. In the Turka region, it is quite common. The image above shows two examples, the shoulder inset and the upper sleeve having been cut from the original shirt for collecting. This is a deplorable action which was common in the past, 
and museums are filled with them, but at least  we have  a record of the embroidery.
The colors used are typical of Boiko embroidery, but there was a lot of variation. Often the embroidery, as here, was reduced to just a frame, but other examles exist, both simpler and more complex. 
See my other two articles on the subject:
http://folkcostume.blogspot.com/2011/05/orest-and-cheryls-wedding-costume-boiko.html

http://folkcostume.blogspot.com/2011/05/examples-of-costume-and-embroidery-of.html

In this article I will simply present graphs of men's shirt embroidery which were published by Krawchuk in the book 'Embroidery of L'viw Oblast'. Do not take the printed colors too literally, the printers had limited choices  in ink colors.

Plate 1
Man's wedding shirt, Town of Turka.This is the one I used for Orest's wedding shirt, see the link above. The dark zigzag motifs in this and many of the following charts represent joining stitches between different fields of cloth, usually between the shoulder inset and the sleeve, and in this case, also between the inset and the body of the shirt.

 

 Plate 6
Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka

 

Inset [ustawka] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka

Inset [ustawka] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 Inset [ustawka] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

 Inset [ustawka] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

Plate 7. 
Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka

Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

Inset [ustawka ]of a shirt. Town of Turka.

 

Inset [ustawka] of a shirt. Town of Turka

 

Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

 

  Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

Inset [ustawka] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

Inset [ustawka] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka. [this is the corner of a fold-down collar] The red zigzags in this and the following image are lengthwise darning stitch. zavolikannia, or perhaps brick stitch.

 

'Shoulder piece' [pryramok] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

Embroidery on a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

Shoulder piece [pryramok] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

Detail of a cuff. Town of Turka.

Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

Shoulder  piece [pryramok] of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

 

 Collar of a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

Detail of the embroidery on a man's shirt. Town of Turka.

I do not know if ustawka and pryramok are different things; I suspect they are just different terms for the same piece. 

The herringbone stitch in the above graphs is done with a thin thread on homespun linen or hemp, which has thick  ground threads. The result looks like this.

Here is another Boiko shirt which is rather different. I do not know exactly which region it is from, but it is more similar to the men's shirts of the Drohobych/Medenyck region, which is often also considered to be Boiko.

Thank you for reading, I hope that you have found this interesting and informative.

Roman K.

email: rkozakand@aol.com

Source Material:
 L. Krawchuk, 'Ukrajinski Narodni Vyshywky L'viws'ka Oblast' [Ukrainian Folk Embroidery of Lviw Oblast], Kyjiw [Kiev] 1961