A Young Girl's Sample.

It seems every towns' historical museum or museum on the home has one thing,  samples of embodiery. Today most embroidered pieces are done on machine or done in cross stitch on special cloth. However there was a time it was done on spare cloth and a young girl would spend countless hours practing her stitches on it making what was called a sampler. I still have plans to make my own, someday. Each one varried depending on the girl but all had commonalities like her name, the alphabet,  numbers 0-9, the year or month, some phrase (usually from the bible), and an image.  I have seen the image varry from flowers, to homes, to a tree. I have even seen one where the girl embroidered her family in front of a house.

These beautiful piece of work would be the foundation for their future because it created a basic knowledge of sewing they would use in making things like towels, napkins and eventually quilts for their home.  I have seen it on corset/stays, pockets, coifs, and so many other pieces of clothing. I have even heard that in some cases gitls would embroider the pocket that usually went under the dress and then wear it over the dress as a way of saying "I am single, and look how neat and tidy my stitches are. I will make you a useful wife."

Today we don't really think of it as a needed skill. If it is done it is usually a preset cross stitch pattern that we picked up on a whim at some museum or JoAnns. We think oh that is pretty but not really origional so it gets pushed into a corner and forgotten about.

So I will leave you with a Historical Stitcher's cross stitch origional that I did almost 10 years ago as a school art project.