Having a servetka to cover one’s Easter basket is pretty important.  Bake own paska – embroider own servetka.  This is my servetka for my Easter basket.  I had drawn out the design a little earlier with no specific use in mind.  Easter was approaching and this pattern sprang to mind.  It came from a beautiful book documenting embroideries from the Hutsul and Pokuttia regions of Ukraine INSPIRATIONS.

Colour choices with regards to threads were essentially the closest I had available at the time.  Some were literally odds and ends of threads, but then that may have been reality for Ukrainian embroideries of times past – what was available was used.  The salmon pink became cream in my incarnation, the yellow teeth on the ends were replaced by orange ones and the dark green stars of the central sections became light green.

Things I love about this design:

It has many colours, 8 if you count the black, and that’s a lot of colours for a Ukrainian design.

Much Ukrainian embroidery to which I was exposed growing up and much Ukrainian embroidery in commonly used techniques (khrestyk, nyzynka) relies on one colour defining the design, often black, and other colours to fill in parts of the design.  Here the colours ARE the design.

The multi-coloured teeth at the ends with their bold black filling added something a little wild to the overall composition and bookended the design so well.

That magic thing about the piece out-doing the imagination happened.  The finished product is bright and popping but the individual elements themselves are both bold and delicate.  This Easter servetka was out and about for it’s first Velykden’ this year.

The fabric:  White 28 count Jobelan.

The form:  Servetka.

The colours:  DMC stranded embroidery cotton.  Black 310, dark blue 930, bright blue 517, dark green 3345, light green 470, maroon 814, orange 900, cream 437.  Used in 3 strands.

The design:  From the book “Гуцульська вишивка” (Hutsulska vyshyvka,) Hutsul Embroidery, from the National Folk Art Museum of Hutsulshchyna and Pokuttia INSPIRATIONS.

I love this design so much that I’ve been inspired to use it on other pieces.  Given it came from a women’s shirt and from the Hutsul region, in my mind it is called Hutsulka Ksenia.

~oOo~

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