The wealth of Hutsul embroidery is demonstrated even in the variety of technical execution. Volodymyr Shukhevych in his fundamental work "Hutsulshchyna" presents 12 techniques of Hutsul embroidery: low stitch of two types, stem stitch, plaiting, overcasting, braid, stitch "across the needle" ("keyka"), stitch ("grid"), overlaying ("sosnivka"), ("cross stitch"), double-sided stem stitch ("braided cord", "net-circa").
A common embroidery technique is the low stitch. Probably, none of all the embroidery techniques has undergone such a complex process of crystallization of artistic and stylistic canons over many years as the low stitch.
This technique is characterized by a high level of artistic and technical mastery. In old samples of embroidery, the contour of the motifs was always executed in black thread, while the pattern and background were in colors. The local artistic feature of Hutsul embroidery lies in its polychrome and ornamental solution.
A striking feature of Hutsul embroidery is its geometric ornament. It contains (within itself) simple motifs and complex figurative elements, motifs - complexes. These include rhombus, semi-rhombus, combined in various ways in horizontal or vertical directions.
In addition to the rhombus, common shapes in the traditional geometric ornament of Hutsul embroidery include square, triangle, circle, oblique figures, crosses, teeth, curls, meander, plaiting, etc. These basic geometric figures create ribbon compositions in various combinations. All these motifs have been known in the art of Eastern Slavs as early as the 10th-13th centuries.
One of them is the geometrization of plant and other artistic forms, as well as the transformation of images of people, animals, birds, plants, etc. into geometric motifs.
In Hutsul embroidery, geometrized anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs have been preserved. They are clearly traced in the embroidery of women's outerwear: on serdaks, keptars, coats, and hoods.
A typical composition of Hutsul embroidery consists of ribbon strips of varying widths, the rapport of which is made up of one, two, or several motifs. They are arranged strictly symmetrically, according to the ornamental grid created from a complex of vertical, horizontal, diagonal, straight, and curved lines that substantiate the corresponding ornamental rhythms.
The following, light ribbon compositions of embroidery are placed at the seams of individual parts of clothing: on the sleeves of serdaks, coats, mantles, at the bottom of trousers, along the edges of leg wraps, hoods.
Monumental in sound are the two- or three-row ribbon compositions in transitional patterns and on the sleeves of women's and men's shirts.
For Hutsulshchyna, rosette and square compositions with numerous variants of contour framing are characteristic. The examined types of embroidery reveal a complex system of ornamentation inherent to a particular technique of execution, material, and purpose.
