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A new exhibition at the Webb Deane Stevens Museum gathers early American needlework to show how girls used needle and thread to record their worlds, often in ways history has only just begun to recognize.
Drawn to the damaged and dismissed, one collector uncovers the stories stitched within these less-than-perfect antique samplers and shares a pattern for you to stitch yourself.
Peek into the past and learn from samplers in the Summer 2025 issue.
Jane Garrett, a skilled lacemaker, spinner, weaver, and knitter, made these bobbin lace samples, which are still treasured today.
The student sample books provide a glimpse into some of the skills that women in the early part of the twentieth century were expected to acquire.
Hannah Powell’s Embroidery of a Petition Against an Indian Execution
A charming, somewhat nonconforming, schoolgirl sampler makes the author smile.
No article about Mabel Urner as a writer was complete without a reference to her passion for collecting needlework samplers and textiles.
A mother’s stitched samplers provided comfort and inspiration during the pandemic.
The following is an excerpt from the November 1929 issue of Needlecraft —The Magazine of Home Arts' full-page article on samplers.
Buttonhole samplers don’t contain the elegant scenes, alphabets, and pious poetry, but a young woman preparing for a job as a domestic servant or seamstress could use a buttonhole sampler to demonstrate her sewing abilities.
Help us uncover the untold stories behind the makers of the past in the Spring 2021 issue of PieceWork.
The Scottish samplers in an exhibition at the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh are part of the Lesley B. Durst collection.
