Only one small district in Central Ukraine has authentic shirts adorned with indigo blue embroidery. They were made with threads dyed with a rather expensive natural dye – indigo, obviously. What’s so interesting about these garments? Except for the blue color of needlework, which was not typical for Ukraine, indigo is a very resistant dye and the threads don’t lose their bright color after many washings and sunlight influence. This allows for indigo blue embroidered shirts to be used for years and years, as these were festive garments worn only for special occasions.
Ukrainian traditional embroidery is diverse – there are dozens of techniques, many different color palettes, and various threads used. But some colors and needlework techniques are more rare and unique than others. And the embroidered shirts we’re talking about today are among them.
Only one small area in Poltava region, Central Ukraine, has authentic shirts adorned with indigo blue embroidery. The threads were dyed with natural indigo dyes, which were imported only. We’re talking about the 19th – early 20th century.
Interesting fact: indigo dyes were usually imported to Ukraine from Asia by the local Jewish people. They had the needed connections to get these dyes and had made a not bad business out of it. Sometimes, shirts with indigo needlework were even called “Jewish shirts”.
So, logically, such garments were expensive and valuable. In some cases, indigo blue threads were used only to add a bit of blue color to the pattern, other garments are embroidered only with them.
Indigo dye is an organic pigment. Historically, it was made from the leaves of certain plants. Today, it’s synthetic. That is why this dye used to be expensive and now it’s no more costly than other dyes.
It’s curious that indigo dye is insoluble in water, so it needs a special solution to use it (based on lime, vitriol, urine, etc). Because of this peculiarity, indigo embroidered shirts didn’t lose the color after many washings and sunlight influence, so even today, such shirts look as bright as they were 100 years ago (while some black threads on vintage clothing, for instance, have lost their original color).
Interesting fact: there aren’t any shirts with indigo blue embroidery made in the cross-stitch technique. Only other, older and more authentically Ukrainian needlework stitches were typical for these garments.
There are not so many indigo blue embroidered shirts that reached our days. Most of them are stored and displayed in Ukrainian museums. Here are a few examples.
