There is one region in Ukraine where you can find a truly unique traditional embroidered shirt. It got the name “sleeves”, and for a particular reason. These women’s shirts are different from any other shirts in Ukraine and beyond. It takes about a year and 700-800 m of thread to finish one shirt. The embroidery designs on these garments aren’t too complicated but they consist of several thousands of repetitive symbols – that’s why this needlework is so time-consuming. These Hutsul “sleeves” represent the proud and hard-working people of the Carpathian region of Ukraine.
Western Ukraine, particularly the Carpathian region, has rather specific traditional clothing. It is noticeably influenced by the climate and weather conditions in this area. As this region is mountainous, the climate here is harsh, cool, and changeable. So, the local folk costumes are warm (even summer outfits are often made from sheepskin or wool) and comfortable (because people have to travel up the hill, cross streams, overstep wood logs, etc.). Sure, in modern days, Hutsul people dress in contemporary clothes, including membrane jackets, fleece pullovers, garments made from synthetic fabrics, and so many other modern outfits. But modern industrially-made garments came in their life only in the early-mid-20th century. Before that, the locals wore traditional handmade clothing, shoes, accessories, and jewelry.
Let’s look at these authentic garments and learn more about them in detail.
One of the main clothing articles was the embroidered shirt. It was made from linen or hemp. And it always was adorned with embroidery – day-to-day shirts had just a few patterns and festive garments were richly embellished.
The sleeves of Hutsul shirts in some districts of Ivano-Frankivsk region were usually densely embroidered – it gave extra warmth to the arms and, of course, served as a decoration to the costume. When people didn’t use the outerwear, they preferred to pair a shirt with a sheepskin vest, so the sleeves were the only protection to the arms and they were visible. That’s why the patterns on the sleeves were the most ornate. Such shirts were even called “sleeves” and not “shirt”.
Another reason for so much embroidery on the shirt was that it was a symbol of wealth. The more embellished it was, the more valuable and status thing it was considered. Wealthier girls didn’t have to embroider such shirts by themselves, they could order them. There were artisans who earned the living by needlework – mostly, poor women who didn’t have a lot of land, spinsters, or females with disabilities. They couldn’t do the farming and looked for other ways of making money.
The making of such shirts was obviously extremely time-consuming. One shirt could be embroidered for about 1 year or for 2-3 winters (as in winter, women had more free time). The local girls invented a trick on how to make it easier to finish the work – a single shirt was being embroidered by all the women in a family (mother, grandmother, sisters, cousins, etc.). You must understand that there was a lot of chores to be done, the women couldn’t just sit the whole day with a needle, so when one of them was doing the needlework, others did chores, then they switched roles. Basically, during almost all of the daylight hours, someone was embroidering this shirt. This method helped to finish the work faster. After that, they began to make the next embroidered shirt – for the next sister.
This particular design consists of 9,000 circles, each one is formed by 13 stitches
The embroidery patterns weren’t too complicated. Usually, one symbol (a flower or circle or star) was repeated several hundred or even thousand times so that they covered the whole visible part of a sleeve. Often, the number of repeats was symbolic, as well as the number of stitches used to make this symbol.
Also, there were different patterns for young girls and adult women, for young boys and adult men. These embroidery designs weren’t just pretty ornamentation, they were deeply symbolic and meaningful.
The embroidery was made with thick cotton and woolen threads. Interesting fact: about 700-800 m of thread are needed to embellish one shirt; it’s the amount used to embroider 4-5 shirts traditional for other regions of Ukraine. Typically, the combination of 2-3 colors was used. Most often, it was red & blue. When red and blue rows of symbols interlace, they create a visual effect when you see violet color from afar. There are no analogs of embroidery with this visual effect in Ukraine and possibly in the world.
Also, there were red, burgundy, black, green, orange colors of embroidery. By the way, shirts with black embroidery weren’t made for widows, as you might think. They were worn during fasting. Though, sometimes, women wore such shirts during mourning, but not for long. Widows quickly stopped wearing black and returned to bright colors because they needed to get married again soon – it was too hard to support a family and do all the many chores by herself. Notice that women wanted to look great and wealthy even during fasting or mourning, so they used black threads and richly adorned the shirts.
Ukrainian girls started to embroider their shirts very early because each girl had to prepare about 20 shirts before her marriage so that she had enough for her whole life. After the wedding, a woman didn’t make shirts for herself anymore, she had many other chores and sewed clothes for children, mended her own and husband’s outfits, etc.
Today, we have too few of these richly embroidered shirts from the area preserved in museums and private collections. One woman could only make 1-3 of them because it took so much time. The most beautiful and ornate were the bridal shirts, but there was a tradition to bury females in their wedding apparel, so, unfortunately, most of these magnificent pieces went to the grave with their owners. Curious fact: Hutsul people believed that, in the afterlife, the husband and wife would recognize each other by their wedding clothing.
But still, nowadays, there are a few craftswomen in Western Ukraine who revive this embroidery technique and make shirts with fully embroidered sleeves. They got their knowledge from mothers and grandmothers and continue to create masterpieces among embroidered shirts.
