About a year ago I received a parcel with a treasure from Ukraine. My grandmother - having seen that I am consistently promoting Ukrainian embroidery traditions here in Estonia - had decided to send me a truly valuable embroidery book from her library.

The book is called “Artistic Embroidery”, and its pages hold a large collection of ornaments from different regions of Ukraine, various techniques, samples and compositions.

The history and authentic samples of Ukrainian embroidery are presented with such love that you want to dive into this book like into a warm evening by the Black Sea or anoint yourself with it as if it’s sacred myrrh.

By the way, my name is Alina Paas. You might have guessed that I am an Ukrainian as well as an embroiderer, but I am also a lawyer and a specialist in intellectual property.

I am also one of the founders of NGO Ukraina Maja. It’s a community organisation here in Tartu, Estonia, for anyone who wants to discover Ukrainian culture or feel connected to the home that might be thousands of kilometers away.

So, I received a treasure treasure from my faraway home.

I want to tell you - it was not easy for my grandmother to part with her “Artistic Embroidery”. In my childhood, this 200-page printed treasure was kept behind a bookcase wooden door, on a special shelf, next to a collection of valuable handicraft tools and books.

You see, “Artistic Embroidery” is also a symbolic testament to what suppression the Ukrainian culture has had to endure. Although the book was published in 1986, editions about authentic Ukrainian embroidery styles were still rare at that time, especially in Ukrainian language. Russification and sovietization had tried to suppress authentic Ukrainian culture for many, many years.

Authentic arts survived only thanks to the masters who kept on practicing and teaching the Ukrainian embroidery even though it was far from easy.

I still clearly remember this sound from my childhood: the sound of the magnet when the shelf’s door was opened. And then I held the magnificent “Artistic Embroidery” in my hands. I remember holding my breath with delight, expecting all the fascinating and compelling things that awaited me on the pages of the book.

MASTER EMBROIDERER OF THE FAMILY

Now I am a master embroiderer in my family. The fact that my grandmother sent me this book - along with some family tools and embroidery threads - represents her deep trust in me. It is a kind of a rite of initiation. I will continue the traditions of my family and my nation with full mandate. Now it is officially my mission and business.

And how does one fulfil the mission of promoting and practicing Ukrainian embroidery in Estonia?

That’s what Vyshyvay stands for. The purpose of this project that I started in 2022 is to inspire people in Estonia to embroider, to try new embroidery techniques and ornaments, and to learn more about Ukrainian embroidery.

Vyshyvay is this web site, as well as a number of workshops held in Estonian, English, and Ukrainian. Most often, Vyshyvay is the weekly Embroidery Club that meets in Ukraina Maja in Tartu. I feel terribly lucky to have found such people with whom to embroider together, and chat openly and sincerely about everything in the world.

Very often we take creative inspiration from the book that my grandmother sent me - in our Embroidery Club it is called ‘The Grandmother's Book’.

WHAT IS THIS BLOG ABOUT

I want to tell you about the power and art of Ukrainian embroidery also in this blog. I will try to unfold it to you through my own contemporary stories and experiences.

My viewpoint is that of a Ukrainian woman living in Estonia. I deliberately chose the path of professional challenges and adventures abroad long before the full-scale war started in 2022. Yet, the outbreak of the war for the existence of my country made me rediscover my Ukrainian identity on a deeper level and reconsider the presentation of the whole Ukrainian culture in the world.

My blog is subjective. While my legal and research brain tends to seek and rely on facts and documents only, most of the information here is not the result of professional ethnographic or cultural research and should not be taken as such.

Embroidery has been with me my whole life and I do not even remember anymore when I started embroidering myself. My relationship with embroidery has had different phases, there were times when I gave up this business altogether. There were times of binge-embroidering. There were times when I got stuck on slow works - the triptych ‘Lemons’, for example, travelled a lot with me and felt like I embroidered it half of my life.

I also remember the first-love drama tears falling on the daisies of the embroidered pillow I was making.

And now I’m here.

It is the phase of delving into the heritage of ancestors and rethinking embroidery techniques and symbols in a circle of like-minded people. ‘The Grandmother’s Book’ is open and we apply our ancestors’ embroidery wisdom in our contemporary work.

Someone in Vyshyvay Embroidery Club in Tartu has already started the ambitious project of embroidering a traditional Ukrainian shirt - a vyshyvanka. Someone has embroidered a rooster from the book on jeans, someone embroidered pendants as gifts for Garage48. And let me break some news to you - this Autumn we are going to organize a whole exhibition of Ukrainian embroidery and craft arts in Tartu!

FOLLOW US AND PARTICIPATE

I invite you to come and take part in Vyshyvay workshops or join the freestyle embroidery sessions of the Embroidery Club. You can take part with any level of training or experience. The schedule of the workshops can be found on the vyshyvay.com page.

To get announcements about new blog posts and news about Ukrainian embroidery events in Tartu, please follow us on social media:

• Vyshyvay on Instagram

• Ukraina Maja on Facebook