Table of contents for Summer 2025 in PieceWork

On the surface, samples and samplers are a window into historic needlework techniques. But they also provide tantalizing bits of information about their makers. Without the existence of these textiles, the lives of the girls who created them might have gone unnoted, as most historic paperwork documented only men’s lives. Often, samplers seem to hint at a mysterious backstory. Was the knitter adding every stitch pattern she could to her ever-growing knitting roll in anticipation of a move to a faraway place? Was a child from a poor background toiling away at darning stitches in the hope of employment? Was the lacemaker creating a collection of stitches so that traditional techniques would not be lost? In these pages, discover the stories some samplers have to tell. Laurann Gilbertson presents sprang,…

Inside the late-seventeenth-century apartments at Hampton Court Palace sits a well-organized mountain of acid-free boxes. Peek inside these boxes and you will see more than a hundred samplers spanning nearly four hundred years. These samplers are in the collection of the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), the international center of excellence for the art of hand embroidery. The samplers are part of the RSN’s large collection, which consists of many thousands of textiles (primarily embroidered ones) made across six continents over the course of a millennium. Samplers have been a part of the RSN’s collection from the organization’s very beginning 153 years ago. A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SPOT SAMPLER The oldest sampler in the RSN collection is a spot sampler dating to approximately 1630 to 1650. Spot samplers were made throughout the…

Sprang is one of several lace techniques used in rural Norway to create and embellish special textiles. Peter Collingwood describes sprang as a method of making fabric by manipulating parallel threads that are fixed at both ends. Adjacent strands or groups of strands are manipulated without the addition of any other threads to stabilize them. Because the warp (made up of parallel threads) is fixed at both ends, usually in a frame, work done at the top of one end appears as a mirror image at the bottom end. Weaver’s shed sticks are inserted to hold the pattern in place while working the next row. Sticks can also be used to help manipulate the strands. Once the sprang is completed, the resulting fabric will have two mirror-image patterns that meet…

The Virgin Mary was the role model for girls and young women of the Catholic faith in early Spanish America. She was idolized as the perfect young woman, and educational efforts for girls were designed to foster the feminine traits she symbolized—obedience, modesty, and religious piety. One of the ways that a young girl was tasked with emulating the Virgin Mary was in the making of a sampler, known as a dechado. Needlework skills were considered an essential component of female education, and embroidering a dechado was a culminating achievement, one aligned with the values that the church hoped to cultivate. FROM THE WORDS OF A MAKER This does not mean that creating a dechado was a spiritual, or even enjoyable, activity for Spanish American girls. Concepción Lombardo de Miramón…

Miniature needlework enthusiast Annelle Ferguson created this charming chart, based on a historical 1750 sampler from Massachusetts, for the May/June 1998 issue of PieceWork. Although Annelle originally designed this pattern to be stitched on 48-count silk gauze, you could easily stitch the charted design on larger-thread-count linen or on Aida cloth. In fact, the individual elements could also be used as a pattern for other crafts such as needlepoint, beading, or stranded knitting. ANNELLE FERGUSON’s interest in miniatures has not diminished since she was a contributor to the May/June 1998 issue of PieceWork. She continues to research antique needlework and to create fine adaptations on silk gauze. Visit her website at ministitches.com.…

1 Mix It Up! Add some excitement to your crochet routine with the Granny Square Card Deck by Claire Montgomerie, published by Search Press. The deck contains 50 unique cards, each with a picture of a finished square on one side and a chart to create it on the other side. Crochet an afghan or learn a new design with this fun set. searchpressusa.com 2 Mini Gems Get your summer knitting on with cotton yarn from Purl Soho. Cotton Chirp yarn is 100% Peruvian Pima cotton, available in 25-gram skeins and a wide variety of colors (Ebb Tide bundle shown here). The DK-weight yarn works up quickly—perfect for a colorful summer dress or a picnic blanket. purlsoho.com 3 Forget the Buttonholes Stud button sets from Jul Designs provide a decorative…

In 1991, a glittering treasure trove composed of over four hundred ecclesiastical embroidery samples, hand-drawn patterns, and swatches of fabric and thread was bequeathed to the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection by Miss Gwendoline Purchas. The items were left to the collection in memory of her friend Miss Dorothy Spittle, who had studied at the prestigious embroidery school that had been based at St. Mary’s Convent in Wantage, United Kingdom. The samples were created by Dorothy Spittle and other students as part of their training. They range from mounted samplers that show the end results of many hours of meticulous stitching to small experimental samples of different techniques, threads, or color schemes. The bequest to the Gawthorpe collection offers a tantalizing glimpse into the workroom of an embroidery school that specialized in…

In her 1943 book Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting Patterns (Hodder and Stoughton, London) author Mary Thomas includes charts and an explanation for “slip-stitch knitting”—designs formed by slipping pattern stitches (unworked) from one needle to the next and knitting or purling them on the next row. However, it wasn’t until the 1960s, with the publication of Barbara G. Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1976) that the craze for mosaic knitting (named by Walker) became popular among American knitters. Walker went on to add mosaic knitting patterns to each of her three subsequent treasuries, and in 1976 she published a book, Mosaic Knitting, that contains 380 of her original designs. When I designed this mosaic shawl, I imagined myself walking along a boardwalk on the…

Embroidered Arraiolos rugs are a lesser-known treasure of Portuguese textile heritage. The rugs, crafted in a small village in the Alentejo region southeast of Lisbon, embody centuries of tradition, skill, and adaptation. The development and preservation of this craft are intertwined with history in Portugal, particularly the history of Muslim communities and their displacement. The Arraiolos rug tradition documents one history of migration, craftsmanship, and cultural exchange. Understanding the evolution of the rugs is to embark on a journey through the layered textures of Portuguese history, economy, and artistry. THE ORIGINS The origins of the Arraiolos rug are unknown, yet the prevailing theory links them to Muslim artisans who fled Lisbon during the forced conversions of 1496. These artisans, who once enjoyed considerable prestige in Lisbon, were part of a…

The following excerpt is shared with kind permission from Quaker Samplers. — Editor During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the art of sampler making was, for a young girl’s education, a pastime and until the late eighteenth century it was only available for the richest or best in society circles. ACKWORTH SCHOOL In 1779 sampler making became open to those less privileged when a school in North Yorkshire, UK—Ackworth School—was founded by John Fothergill with the intention of educating Quaker families who were less prosperous. From a first attendance of only 49 boys and girls, the school gradually increased to 310 students. Both male and female pupils were taught writing and arithmetic by the schoolmaster, and the school-mistress instructed the girls in reading, sewing, knitting and spinning. The boys also…

In the 1970s, staff at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) were in the process of creating microfilm records from Revolutionary War–era pension documents when they came across a number of embroidered samplers in the files. Many girls stitched personal information such as name, birthdate, age, and hometown into their samplers. But these textiles did not just provide evidence of girls’ sewing skills, patience, or artistic talent. At one time, they were also considered a valid form of identification. Beginning in 1836, widows or surviving adult children who could prove that their husbands or fathers had engaged in military service were eligible to apply for government pensions. Of course, they also had to provide proof of their relationship to the late serviceman. In the absence of consistent records, the…