Special 2008

The lovely corner motifs and the blue name in this sampler catch the eye. The little stitcher has worked the two most common alphabets. Her tiny sampler is complete: with a simple frame, two small borders, two corner motifs, and as a highlight - her own name! The original is part of Margit Guerrein's sampler collection. Ulrike Grommisch from Essen, Germany made a photo of her reproduction available to me. 

The small stitching patterns, very popular at that time, mostly in Leporello fold, were versatile. This alphabet of capital letters with small variations has great similarity with a French pattern by A. Royer from 1867/68.

Martha received a typical piece of fabric by her needlework teacher - bordered by red stripes on the right and on the left hand side, on top and on bottom. These uniform pieces of fabric should be filled by the pupils. Many samplers of the time were worked in "Turkish Red".

The little girls usually stitched different alphabets, corner motifs, their names, and the year, sometimes in different stitches. The piece had to be finished for assessment at the end of the school year - at Easter.

Martha has executed her two corner motifs with tiny blue variations. Each pupil an individual!

What a nice name! "Glueck" is German for "luck".

Little Elisabeth’s sampler starts - like many samplers of this time at the beginning of the last century - with a series of “half cross stitches”, a preliminary practice for the complete cross stitch. In the third row, she already worked these crosses shifted! The fabric was rather coarse and the embroidery floss as well. But the stitcher observed the gaps between the letters and remained on the invisible line. She alternately used her two school colours.

She designed very personally the lower third of her exercise: with two magnificent crowns and four first names - probably brothers and sister - and an intricate monogram, according to the fashion in those days, the Art Nouveau.

At the end the little girl decorated the upper and lower edge with carefully executed satin stitches and pulled the cross threads to get fringes. This well-balanced school sampler belongs to the beautiful little collection of my friend Margit Guerrein. Thanks a lot!