 When visiting Sharon yesturday she was stitching her sampler together, Have you seen Sharon’s Sampler? it is worth a look, and we were talking Samplers.
I loved samplers from the first one that I saw and wished that I had learnt on a sampler…The first samplers I saw where cross stitch Alphabet Samplers an I made a miniature one of them in 1995 but it was the long band samplers that I really fell in love with…I have started them before but not got anywhere with them and although I have made a few small samplers over the years unlike Sharon who made all of hers the same width mine are all different widths, and I have done thread samplers like the Spanish Knotted Feather Stitch sample below…
Another difference between Sharon’s and mine is that most of hers are on linen, I had done mine on calico (muslin), it just doesn’t have the same ambiance as linen does…I made my Stumpwork Sampler on a nicer fabric and it is my favourite of what I have done.
The Samplers that I really, really fell in love with when I learnt about them are the 4 inch wide band samplers that where kept in the sewing boxes of days gone by to record new stitches as they were learnt because they had no books/internet to reference…These darling band samplers were not lined so that the backs of the stitches could be seen (being able to see the back can help when working out how the stitch was done)…Wanting to make one with the back showing means that I don’t want to start with knots, I did know how to start with a couple of tiny back stitches but sometimes those stitches can be seen, today Sharon solved that problem for me, she tought me about waste knots, a term I have never even heard before, which work simple by knotting the thread to hold it in place while you stitch the first few stitches, working them over the thread on the back to hold it in place, then the knot can be cut off leaving a neat start to the seam.
 
By the time I left Sharon’s I had a 4 inch wide lenth of linen with the edges zig zagged and threads pulled on either side to line up the start and finish of the stitches…I have got it started but I am tired and going to bed so it will be tomorrow before I take and edit those photos.
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