Ivan Matfeevich Rezansky (John Beebe)

This post is a translation of the introduction and chapter 1 of Lidya Bebeshko’s informative book on Ukrainian embroidery, covering patterns for traditional folk shirts (also called vyshyvanki) and the embroidered designs used to decorate them. The second part of the book consists of a plethora of charted designs for men’s and women’s shirt embroidery from various regions of Ukraine. I got this book last Christmas from my sister, but as it was in Ukrainian, it’s taken me a while to bite the bullet and dig into it. After taking a course at the Royal School of Needlework in London on Ukrainian whitework earlier this year, I was inspired to go back and start trying to parse my way through the Ukrainian with help from online tools and my knowledge of Russian, which was only somewhat helpful. I hope you find Ms. Bebeshko’s insights as useful as I did.