A Gathering of Quaker Samplers,(Ackworth Collection) – The Cross Stitch Guild - It A Finish!

 Yah, I have finally ffo’d my little book of Quaker Samplers!

Going back, I purchased the kit for this little book back in 1993

while visiting my first ever stitching show at Olympia, in London,  along with a few other kits which were long since stitched and finished.

Voice of the Shepheard (Home Sweet Home) - Told in a Garden

Hardanger Tile 

Time and Season - Moria Blackburn

But I was frightened to make a start on this project,
thinking that this type of finishing may have been above and beyond my skill set at the time and for that reason it sat in my sewing room until February this year collecting dust.

I think what spurred me on was stitching all the Blackbird designs from the ‘For the Birds’ Loose Feathers series, to make a heritage book that I called Family Footprints in the Sands of Time. 

I put that together as a concertina, working it out as I went and although it was constructed totally differently from this Quaker book, I felt confident enough to follow the finishing instructions and tackle it now.

I’m not sure if this will be helpful to anyone, but I thought I would show you the finishing in stages, so here goes.

These were my first Quaker squares and I found the stitching fun, with each square being small and stitched in one a solid shade of thread.

The first thing was to make the stitched pieces into individual pages and this was done by working a nun stitch all around the edge of each piece and  trimming the fabric.

The piece was then folded wrong sides together and joined around three sides with a small running stitch.

Next, it was time to tackle the front and back cover and this was the bit I was worried about because I had to pull threads and work a hem stitch around the piece.  

Baste the fold lines.

Pull the threads and weave in the ends.

Fold and work the Hem Stitch.

In actual fact it wasn’t as bad as I expected and although the corners are not as neat as they should be, I don’t think I did badly for a first try.

The next part of the instructions said to line the inside of the covers with the included red silk and then attach the individual pages to the silk.

I was concerned that the weight of the pages would pull the lining and distort it, so after a little thought I decided to do my own thing.  I added a strip of the linen to the back of the lining and stitched the same three central lines of four-sided stitch as appears  on the cover 

before attaching  the lining.

Finally, I slip stitched the pages to the inside spine on the book.

So there we have it......another little book to add to my collection.

Happy Stitching!

Sue

x

 

My Quaker Sampler Book Kit

Designer – The Cross Stitch Guild / Ackworth Collection

Fabric – 32ct Belfast Linen – Raw

Threads – 6 stranded cotton

Silk Lining fabric

Olympia - Stitch Show

April  1993

A visit to my first ever Stitching show at Olympia back in 1993 saw me return home with three new projects to work on.

The first was a Moira Blackburn sampler kit called Time and Season.

I’m ashamed to say that even though I had wanted to stitch a sampler for a long time, the one I brought that day was destined never to be finished, in fact all the threads and chart are still sitting at the bottom of my foot stall where I store a lot of my sewing paraphernalia. I think it was the fabric that came in the kit that put me off because I really loved the muted colours and the design. My fingers were getting quite sore as I stitched because the ‘Rustico’ aida fabric was so course.
Who knows, one day I may go back to it, we shall have to see.

One of the other bits I brought that day was a chart called ‘Voice of the Shepherd’ by a company called Told In A Garden.
On the stand at the show they had stitched it and mounted it an oval wooden frame, which looked amazing but by changing the wording they made it into a Home Sweet Home sampler.

Here’s my finished one.  It's counted Cross Stitch, stitched on evenweave fabric.

Finally the last thing I brought that day was a little kit for stitching a Hardanger square, a technique that I’d not tried before.
I eventually got around to stitching it and then the square sat in my footstool alongside the ‘great unfinished sampler’ because I had no idea what to do with it.

It wasn’t until many years later when my friend Nicki came to visit from Switzerland that she suggested making it into a cushion. I’m useless with a sewing machine, so when she went back home she took it with here and a few weeks later this is what arrived in the post.

My beautiful cushion.