Finished sampler – happy dance!

The Catherine Theron 1840 Town House Sampler is complete!  I started this to be a respite piece while working on Jane Turner, intending to finish a band on Jane, then do a section of this sampler (vine, strawberries, alphabet…), then work another band on Jane.  But with nearly every band finish on Jane, I was excited to start the next band, so this little sampler lounged about unattended for quite a while.

I picked up this kit at the Spirit of Cross Stitch Festival in 1992 - several years earlier I’d fallen in love with Catherine’s designs and with those nifty new overdyed flosses she made and used.  Being a child of suburbia, I always thought the name of the sampler a trifle odd – that sure doesn’t look like any townhouse I’ve ever seen!

At some point, I read the info included in the kit. Likely this falls under the heading of “when all else fails, read the directions.”

This piece was designed using several samplers from the collection of the Historical Society of Glastonbury.  The strawberry border is an adaptation of a sampler by Harriet M. Porter “marked in the summer of 1846 aged 13 years P. Skinner instrss.”

The building depicted is my rendition of the Historical Society’s building.  This edifice is the original Glastonbury Town House built in 1840.

Ah, it’s not a townhouse – a row house, as my father used to call them - it’s a Town House, a government building!  (sigh)  Curious at this point, I had to see what this building really looked like, especially since I’d always felt the door was a bit off. 

Hmmm… that’s lower, wider, and has a less steeply pitched roof.  So the Town House on my sampler is *my* interpretation of the actual building.  I made some other changes too - keep in mind I started this while working on Jane Turner, so even though the piece called for plain cross stitch with just a handful of Algerian eyelets, I had to add some more fancy stitches.

On each side of the border, one large strawberry is stitched in Smyrna cross and one small berry in tent stitch.  Within the alphabet, I stitched my initials in eyelets (something I once saw recommended by Eileen Bennett).  Which seemed a great idea until I realized that I’d stitched the “H” in the wrong color.  I discovered that frogging eyelets over two threads is very like frogging cross stitch over one, so the wrong color stayed.

I added a gold overdyed thread (left over from stitching another Catherine Theron sampler), changed the filler motifs, and made the tree more densely leafed.  Also added more grass.  The last dividing band was to be all Algerian eyes, but I thought it would look neat to make a pattern of those and full eyelets.  Not the best idea, probably.

I tried to show the triangle of recessed brickwork above the doors.  You can really only see the difference the tent stitches make when you’re right on top of the sampler, but I’m still pleased with it.  You can see some of those random berry changes here.

This is a small sampler - stitched area is less than six inches by about eight and a half.

The 1840 Town House Sampler

stitched on 28 count linen (don’t know color - provided in kit)

GAST and DMC Flower Thread

started April 6, 2017

completed March 1, 2019

Thanks for visiting me today!

>^..^<