How You Know

How do you know you have a fabulous husband? He accompanies you to the Chester County Historical Society to see the In Stitches show.

You gotta go. (Come to Pennsylvania!) There are scores of samplers done by girls at the Westtown school, founded in 1799. There are regular samplers, medallion samplers (Quaker*), "excerpts", and memorial samplers. There are pin balls, needlerolls, and the most awesome globes stitched on silk. In the advertising shot, you can also see a representation of the school. There are a few of these, but the board of trustees put the kibosh on those. They were "superfluous" to the girls' education. The samplers with letter or verses, and even the globes, obviously contributed to learning. But not the representations of the school itself.

The "excerpts" have a vine border with a part of a poem or bible verse in them. If I recall, they may even be from speeches and books. Every once in a while I am overcome by a speech or long passage from a book, and I think I should stitch it. This may be the best approach!

They let you take pictures but you need permission to post them to your blog, so I thought I'd cut out the middle man and ask for photos to use. They haven't responded. Probably figure they could have used the advertising at the beginning of the show rather than now (closes September 7).

*Seems strange to call them this since it was a Quaker school, and uh, they were pretty much all Quaker samplers. And many of them based on what they were doing across the pond at the Ackworth School.