These two small samplers, made by the same English girl, were made in Chipping Norton, a small market town in Oxfordshire.

Each one was stitched with silk thread on linen, the edges bound with watered green silk ribbon. The pictorial sampler could depict Eliza's home or school (although blue buildings are rarely seen in the Cotswolds). This more ambitious sampler requires some freehand work in the lower half and alongside the roof of the house, employing cross, stem and satin stitches, but I have charted it so that it can be stitched using the counted thread technique as well.

The finished size on 35 count linen will be approximately 8" x 6-3/4".

Eliza's other sampler, dated 1795, requires only cross stitch.

The charts have been printed in full color using the format that The Scarlet Letter has popularized for the past fifteen years, offering alternatives on different thread counts of linen and color numbers for both DMC cotton and AVAS soie d'alger silk.

Copyright The Scarlet Letter. Description thanks to Marsha.