Heartstring Samplery Workshop

On Saturday, May 4th, we had the pleasure of hosting Beth Twist from Heartstring Samplery to teach two pieces – her Pins & Orts pincushion and strawberry (pictured above) and a reproduction sampler by Mary Pearson.

The first part of the day was spent assembling the pre-stitched pincushion/ort container and strawberry.

Beth showing us how to attach the pincushion to the ort container.

The finished product!

After a lunch break for Beth and the attendees, we reconvened so that Beth could teach the second half of the day.  She presented the Mary Pearson sampler, a reproduction of an antique sampler in the collection of a historical society.  They had reached out to Beth to have the antique reproduced so that they could display it as the original is in extremely bad condition.

Look at all the beautiful colors used in the sampler!

Beth shared what she knew of the history of the sampler as well as her journey and challenges with reproducing it.  Both the antique and the reproduction are in the care of the historical society, so Beth brought high resolution full color copies of both to share with us.

This is the reproduction (apologies for the glare).  It’s a beautiful Adam & Eve sampler, with an idyllic pastoral scene at the bottom.  The border, vases of flowers, and a lovely verse make the sampler complete.

A few closeups…

Part of what made this such a challenge to chart is that Mary would sometimes move motifs off the “grid” by one thread.  The sampler has both over one and over two stitches.

And take a look at that snake -he’s fantastic!

Here’s a look at the antique.  You can see the shape it’s in and how the threads bled at some point when it was washed, thus the blue sheep.  But you can see the over one and over two stitching here.

No more blue sheep!

It was such a fun day, and not only did we get two amazing projects from Beth but she also brought a fantastic trunk show so we could admire and shop!