It always made me really happy when Ukrainian embroidery was admired by my non-Ukrainian Australian friends.  Lara and I became friends at Med school and to this day she is one of my closest friends.  Lara is the biggest non-Uki fan of my Uki embroidery and of all sorts of other traditions I’ve shared with her over the years.  When she married Paul, I embroidered for them a softly-spoken little rushnyk.

The composition was essentially invented as I went along, but the core elements of the design I took from a book by Ol’ha Voznytsia, “Embroidery is My Life” INSPIRATIONS.  I had wanted to embroider with ochka, little square or round shapes pulled slightly tight so a small hole opens up in the middle, for the first time and the design embroidered in white threads caught my eye.  I don’t quite know how to do the technique of merezhka, essentially lace-making, in the original design so I did one I’d seen in my Baba’s work.

Here’s the rushnyk in progress and as a finished product.  You’ll forgive me – it was made a while ago and I don’t recall the type of fabric or colour of the silver thread.  However, the threads were DMC stranded cotton used in two threads and there was a white and a silver-green thread used.

~oOo~

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