Orest and Cheryl's Wedding costume - Boiko costume and embroidery of Turka county, Halychyna, Ukraine

Hello All,

Today i will talk about one of the Boiko costumes, that of Turka county, which is the best documented. The Boiko region covers three counties in L'viw Oblast, plus the mountainous part of Ivano-Frankiwsk Oblast, west of the Hutsul area, and the extreme southeast corner of Poland, east of the Lemko area. Drohobych and surrounding areas are also sometimes considered to be part of the Boiko region. Some Boiki do not like the term, preferring to call themselves 'Verkhovyntsi', or 'Highlanders'. Here again is our map of L'viw Oblast so you can orient yourselves.

 I should start with a photo giving a good view of the costume. When Orest and Cheryl got engaged, our dance group [the Omaha International Folk Dancers] decided to make them a set of costumes from this region, because Orest's father is from the village of Berezhok-Zhukotyn' in Turka county. I came up with the idea, researched the costume and organized the project, but everyone helped. Somehow we managed to [almost] complete the costumes in time for the wedding without them finding out. Here is a photo from the wedding reception.



The embroidery on her apron should extend all the way to the edge, which has since been rectified, but otherwise the costume was complete. Today i will show you their wedding costume, andin a later post  i will add some other material that they collected from his father's native village. Here is the chemise which we made for her.

Turn down collar, embroidered inset on top of body piece, smocking and embroidery on top of the sleeve. Smocking is very typical of this region, and forms part of the embroidery design. Here is a closeup of the inset [ustawka] embroidery.

Nyz, or darning stitch embroidery, which in this region is not necessarily filled in with other colors, with border in braid stitch and cross stitch. I got this design from Krawchuk.

The smocking and the bit of embroidery framing it are quite typical of this region as well. Here is a closeup of the lower sleeve and cuff. If i was doing it today, i would put a backstitch frame around the embroidery on the cuff.

Here is a a closeup of the embroidery on the collar.

You can see that the body of the shirt is smocked into the collar, front and back, but not on the ustawka. We had to guess at the collar measurement, and we made it too small, so she added a piece in back. In Krawchuk, this design was originally for a cuff, with smocking on the sleeve.

The skirt would be the maliovanka for every day, with a design more black than white, see the photos in the posting about the Drohobych costume. For festive occasions, the skirt was linen, made of four or five loom widths, the ones in back being embroidered and gathered and also smocked into the waistband, and the fourth left smooth and plain in front. Here is Cheryl's skirt. The opening is in the middle front, and the skirt was tied around the waist by cords pulled through buttonholes in the waistband.



Here is a closeup of the embroidery, cross stitch with some braid stitch which I also took from Krawchuk.

The graph shows this as the shoulder inset, with smocking embroidery on the upper sleeve shown at the bottom.

We put the same embroidery on the apron. The apron, as in other parts of Halychyna was made of two loom widths joined in the middle by a decorative stitch. I had wide material, so i made it in one piece, but put the joining stitch on the surface, so it would look traditional. And, as i promised, the embroidery is now complete. Cheryl took it and finished it.

I took the edge design and turned the corner with it to run on either side of the central joining stitch. I also put a row of merezhka hemstitching on either side, and of course to join the hem as well.  This is often done to finish embroidery compositions.

We made a second apron from challis cloth, just for variety, this was commonly done as well. The middle front of is smocked.

This is one of the few regions where the men's shirts are traditionally embroidered on the shoulder inset. Here is Orest's shirt. It is made with the same cut as the women's shirt, which is typical of Halychyna.

We made an attempt to choose embroidery designs that harmonized between the two. Here is a closeup of the shoulder inset and upper sleeve embroidery.

The embroidery is cross stitch, with a decorative joining stitch holding the pieces together. Here is another view. If i were making this today, i would have some small framing embroidery on the sides of the sleeve.

I picked shades that i thought would harmonize nicely. In Krawchuk, this design was originally drawn from a man's wedding shirt

I took the same design and altered it to make the embroidery on the cuffs, collar and front. The ties to close the shirt were sewn into the seam. I made the ties by twisting the same floss i embroidered with.

 Then we made the vests, very similar for both, except Orest's is short. Actually we had his made to order by a woman who did sewing, her company name was Folk Couture. We had our hands full finishing the embroidery. Both vests are finished with red and white cording, with loop and knot closures.

Cheryl's is longer, and is slit on the sides.

Just for verification, i would like to post two drawings by Kul'chytska.

Thank you for reading. I would like to thank everyone who participated in this project. If you would like to be mentioned by name, let me know. You know who you are. I decided to err on the side of privacy. I hope that this may inspire someone else to undertake such a project.

Feel free to contact me with requests for research. I hope to eventually cover all of Europe and the Former Russian Empire/Soviet Union. I also gratefully accept tips on source materials which i may not have. I also accept commissions to research/design, sew, and/or embroider costumes or other items for groups or individuals

Roman K.
Rkozakand@aol.com

Source Material:

The photos were taken by Orest Lechnowsky, and the costumes are obvioulsy part of his and his wife's private collection.

L. Krawchuk, 'Ukrajinski Narodni Vyshywky L'viws'ka Oblast' [Ukrainian Folk Embroidery of Lviw Oblast], Kyjiw [Kiev] 1961
K. Matejko, 'Ukrajinskyj Narodnyj Odiah' [Ukrainian Folk Clothing], Kyjiw [Kiev], 1977
O. Kul'chytska, 'Folk Costumes of the Western Regions of the Ukrainian SSR, 1959

Costume & Embroidery of Drohobych county and vicinity, Halychyna, Ukraine

Hello All,

Today we will continue our series on the costumes and embroidery of Halychyna. We will talk about Drohobych county. Here again is our map so we can orient ourselves.

This area is sometimes considered to be part of the Boiko Region, although in my opinion the Boiko Region properly speaking is in the mountains, and this area is just foothills. The Boiko region consists of Turka, Skole, Dobromyl, Perehinsk counties, and a piece of Poland east of the Sian river. The costume is similar, although an argument could be made that the costume is typical of Halychyna. Here is a woman wearing the Drohobych area costume from the village of Ripchytsi.

The outfit consists of a chemise with local embroidery on inset [ustawka], cuffs and collar, skirt, in this case of store bought cloth. apron of two loom widths of linen, embroidered on the bottom edge, with an ornamental joining in the middle. Kamizelka in cloth matching the skirt of standard Halychyna cut, fastening in front, ribbons around the bottom edge. Kybalka on the head [wooden ring covered with cloth], covered by a kerchief, and boots. Here is another photo of a somewhat older form of the costume; this one is from the village of Litynia.

Maliovanka type skirt, of linen with home printed design. In this region there was usually a white design on a black background, the same double width apron, kybalka and kerchief, sash, footcloths with khodaky, moccasin type footwear with straps, and a keptar, sheepskin vest similar to the Hutsuls, but with simpler ornamentation.

Here is a couple from the village of Hruxhiw, showing the men's costume, again typical for Halychyna. Shirt same cut as women's, but shorter, with embroidery on the front, collar, cuffs, and a narrow band around the shoulder inset. Linen pants, with either boots or khodaky and footcloths, and a sash, or in this case a leather belt, from which hangs a knife and other daily useful items. men would also wear a sheepskin vest when needed. As in other parts of Halychyna, a long linen overcoat was worn in warmer weather, and a wool or sheepskin one in colder. The linen 'hellgrauefruejahrsmantel' is called a polotnianka, and it had minimal embroidery, as in this photo showing another costume from the village of Hrushiw. This man seems to be wearing two of them.

Kul'chytska verifies this basic costume, here is a drawing she made of a woman in the village of Hrushiw, around 1930. She includes some examples of embroidery.

In contrast to the neighboring county of Rudky, where the embroidery is mostly red with some admixture of other colors, the embroidery of Drohobych county is mostly black, with some red. Some of the more recent designs resemble the designs of Rudky quite a bit, being rows of small roses with braid stitch in between. Here is an example of one such design. Change the colors and you would have a Rudky design.

The older embroidery designs were based on rows of braid stitch, herringbone and flat stitch in geometric designs, similar to Javoriw emboidery, and which are also still found to some extent in Horodok and Rudky counties, but in the same color scheme, mostly black with some red. Here is an example.

This is the embroidery on the shoulder inset of a woman's chemise. You can see the row of herringbone right on the seam turns up and forms a frame on the two sides of the ustawka. The small cross stitch design continues up the middle, as is typical of Halychyna. The several rows below are embroidered on the upper sleeve, and continue to the sides for a while. Later some cross stitch came to be incorporated in the designs, as in this example.

Again, you can see the design that frames the ustawka, and some of the rows on the bottom would have been on the upper sleeve. The more elaborate floral designs are the most recent to develop. Here is a graphing of the design from the ustawka and also the cuff of  woman's chemise.

The design for the cuff is at the top. The cuff is relatively wide, but not as wide as in the Sokal' region, and is overcast around the edge with alternating black and red thread. you can see the narrow design which frames the ustawa, and forms a line along the upper sleeve, but in this case, not below the ustawka embroidery. This design looks like it is meant for the shoulder inset and the sleeve to be cut in one piece. The cut of the chemise is the typical one for Halychyna. Approximate dimensions are shown in cm.

The chemise was not cut to be seen below the skirt in this region. If we look at some chemises, we see narrow designs embroidered not only along the sides of the shoulder insets, but along the top of the sleeve, and the sleeve seam as well. The sleeve on the right in this first photograph has embroidery very similar to the graphed one above which consistes only of braid sttich, herringbone and geometric flat stitching. The one on the left has a design similar to the one just above, including the narrow design that turns the corner and goes towards the seam of the sleeve.



Here is an embroidered shoulder inset from a woman's chemise, showing how the embroidery is distributed on the inset itself. It also includes part of the upper sleeve, the seam being the wide black line between the two rows of the rose design. This is made by means of a joining stitch different from that of the Sokal' region. Instructions can be found in Tanya Diakiw O'Niel's book, 'Ukrainian Embroidery Techniques', on page 127, under 'Boikian Joining'. [I think the 'woman's shirt' she has illustrated is actually a man's shirt, though].

The men's shirt has almost the same cut, except that there is wide embroidery on the collar and cuffs, and just the narrow frame on the shoulder pieces.

Here is a closeup of the embroidery on the collar and front of a man's shirt.

The cuffs are gathered into the cuffs, and sometimes the lower sleeve is smocked over the gathers, as in this example.

In some villages, the women wore a headpiece called a 'promychka' under the kerchief. The piece that showed in front on the forehead was embroidered and edged with buttonhole stitch. Here is an example of that embroidery.

Often you will see design typical of this region graphed in general books on Ukrainian Embroidery referred to as Boiko. There is, in fact a great deal of variety in Boiko embroidery, in color and technique. Here is one such example from Ruryk's 'Ukrainian Embroidery Designs and Stitches'.

This is the design embroidered on the disjointed shoulder inset shown above. That is enough for one posting i think, so i will give you just one more embroidery design and close.



Thank you for reading. I hope that you find this interesting, and will be able to use some of these ideas or designs in your own handiwork.

Feel free to contact me with requests for research. I hope to eventually cover all of Europe and the Former Russian Empire/Soviet Union. I also gratefully accept tips on source materials which i may not have. I also accept commissions to research/design, sew, and/or embroider costumes or other items for groups or individuals.

Roman K.
Rkozakand@aol.com

Source Material:

L. Krawchuk, 'Ukrajinski Narodni Vyshywky L'viws'ka Oblast' [Ukrainian Folk Embroidery of Lviw Oblast], Kyjiw [Kiev] 1961
Myroslava Kot, 'Vyshywka Drohobychyny, Tradytsiji i Suchasnist'' [Embroidery of Drohobych Region, Tradition and Present Day], L'viw, 1999
Nancy Ruryk, 'Ukrainian Embroidery Designs and Stitches', Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1958

Tania Diakiw O'Neill, 'Ukrainian Embroidery Techniques', Mountaintop, Pa, 1984.

O. Kul'chytska, 'Folk Costumes of the Western Regions of the Ukrainian SSR, 1959

Hutsul Cross Stitch Embroidery, Ukraine

I have written about the Hutsul Nyzynka embroidery, which is considered to be the most typical. But Cross stitch embroidery has been made in the Hutsul lands for quite a long time now. The color palette tends to be much the same, based on black, maroon, red, orange, yellow ochre, yellow and some admixture of green. This has become very popular in the foothills and lowlands north of the Hutsul lands proper. You find embroiderers doing this style of embroidery all over Halychyna and further.

One version is doing a cross stitch imitation of Nyzynka designs, which tends not to be very effective, like this.

This results in a loss of the clean diagonal lines of the Nyzynka technique, obtaining instead a clumsy stairstep effect. This particular design could easily be done in Nyzynka. However, cross stitch enabled these designs to be elaborated in ways that Nyzynka was not capable of. Here are a couple examples of Nyzynka inspired designs that take advantage of the versatilitly of cross stitch. This first one is from a collection of graphed designs gathered and published by Ksenia Kolotylo.

And this one was embroidered by Ol'ha Voznytsia.

Cross Stitch is characterized by strong vertical and horizontal lines, and so lends itself to different sorts of designs. Here is a very old Hutsul design that has been copied and adapted over quite a wide area, even outside of Ukraine.

Many people have copied and elaborated designs in this style, and there are literally hundreds of them out there. Here are a couple of pieces executed by Yevhenia Henyk.

You will find these designs in many Ukrainian homes on various pieces of linen. Pillowcases, table scarves, rushnyks, curtains, table cloths, clothing, etc, The art of embroidery is very much alive among the Ukrainian people, and these are some of the most popular designs. Just a few more examples.

Yet another design from the collection of Ksenia Kolotylo, not derived from Nyzynka.

And just a couple more examples.

This is only a small sampling. This does not exhaust Hutsul embroidery by any means. One final note, the colors in many of these images are not exact. Either they were graphed schematically, without access to the exact shades necessary, or the printing technology available was not very good. So some of the images show darker or lighter or variations in hue that are not true to life. Brown is not used, what may appear to be brown will actually be some shade of maroon. If you decide to do some of these designs, i recommend that you go to the store, pick a skein of each color, hold them in your hand to see how well they complement each other, and substitute various possible shades until you find them pleasing, that is what i do myself. My recommendations for a Hutsul palette in DMC numbers: Black 312,

Maroon 777 or 815 or both, the darker could substitute for black, Red 666 or 321, Green 905,  Ochre 741. Orange 947, and Yellow 444? [i think].

I hope you find this inspiring. I think Diane will find this useful.

Please contact me with requests for research or commissions for something you may want designs, sewn or embroidered.

One positive thing that the Soviets did was to put the applied arts into the realm of art, and its practitioners on a level to be admired and respected. As they say, no-one can be wrong ALL the time.

Go forth and be creative. Our ancestors made much of what they used day to day, and they felt it necessary for such items to be things of beauty. We should not settle for the ordinary or the ugly in utilitarian items.

Thank you for reading.

Feel free to contact me with requests for research. I hope to eventually cover all of Europe and the Former Russian Empire/Soviet Union. I also gratefully accept tips on source materials which i may not have. I also accept commissions to research/design, sew, and/or embroider costumes or other items for groups or individuals.

Roman K.
Rkozakand@aol.com

Source Material:

Ksenia Kolotylo, 'Ksenia Kolotylo Al'bom', Kyjiw [Kiev], 1992

Hasiuk & Stepan, 'Khydozhne Vyshyvannia' [Artistic Embroidery], Kyjiw [Kiev] 1986

Yevheniya Henyk, 'Embroidery and Weaving', Kyjiw [Kiev], 2007

Ol'ha Voznytsia, 'Vyshywka Moje Zhyttia' [Embroidery of my Life], Drohobych, Ukraine, 2006

V. Bilozub et al. 'Ukrainian Folk Art - Weaving and Embroidery', Kiev 1960