Stitching Mary Wigham with Marie in France

Marie put the coffee pot on - we are all coming round to stitch with you tonight!

Si vous etes une francaise, inscrivez-vous a Paule en France!

Elizabethan Inspirations - Reeth Museum - Swaledale

Reeth Museum up North in beautiful Swaledale is hosting an exhibition by Richmond and Leyburn Embroiderers' Guild until June 20th. Click here for more details. I was there imaging a little while ago and we'll have a Needleprint Focus on Museums for Reeth coming shortly.

Tullie House Museum Samplers

In an early blog I have mentioned the Tullie House Sampler Collection in Carlisle. The curator there has given me permission to show a sampler from the collection to you. This idyllic sampler of 1770 depicting a lady dressed as shepherdess offering a summer garland to her swain watched by lambs floating on grassy tussocks is one of my all-time favourites. If you would like to register interest in a downloadable colour .pdf of the entire collection of 64 samplers with museum notes, then just email me.

Early Text Samplers at Ackworth School

It is tempting to think that early text samplers were exercises in writing. But writing at the time was considered a separate skill to reading, and a special writing master was employed for both girls and boys. He didn't teach letter recognition, but the specific skills of calligraphy and composition. Text found on Ackworth samplers does not resemble the writing style that was taught at school and is seen in scholars' early copy-books, it resembles text that would be seen in a printed book. Reading matter was in short supply at the school - not because the school could not afford books, but because there were few reading books suitable for school children at the time. Horn books had been commonly used for recognizing letters and syllables. The standard method of learning to read was to learn individual letters and then to progress to learning words of one syllable, followed by words of two, then three, then four syllables. It is interesting to compare Hannah Westcombe's 1783 text sampler with text from a hornbook of 1784. There are many similarities to be discovered. My belief is that the girls when stitching their text samplers were creating tools for literacy for teaching younger girls and, when the time came, for teaching their own children to read.