July 13, 2023

My story began just about this time two years ago.  I was trolling through the internet just looking for visual images and ideas. It is a favorite hobby of mine, just looking, just imagining.

That morning I visited  M. Finkel & Daughter, a site with wonderful antique samplers. and I found these: two barely-started samplers. Below is Amy Finkel's photo.

I was captivated and couldn't resist. By the afternoon they were mine and I was totally impatient waiting for them.  Several days later they arrived, wound around their dowel.

Each had a border, one a few more lines of letters than the other, what looked to me like an American flag and the date '1840.

The photo on the right shows a

closeup of the 'flag' and the date

1840.

Amy Finkel had written to me that

she thought the samplers were

American but couldn't be absolutely

certain.  She said that they had come

from a long-time American Collector.

The arrival of the samplers marked

the beginning of a year-long journey.

My Summertime Story  Page 1

I found Two Barely Started Samplers

July 14, 2023

So the samplers arrived about a week later and I had a grand time looking at them and fantacizing what to do with the idea. I knew I didn't want to finish the originals, I wanted to keep them as is. I wanted to make a sampler of my own, with an idea originating from the suggestion of these two.

July 15, 2023

I found the three samplers on line and currently for sale in the neighbohood of about $1K each. If you look carefully at each, you will see that indeed they share features in common with my barely-started pair, among the features flower borders.

All three samplers have a saying plus spot motifs, easy enough to adapt, dream up, or to tinker with if I wished. I would have many options: I could make the motifs look like they were from the 1840's or I could modernize them so that they belonged to today with a nod back to those of 180 years ago, or I could mix the two ages.

Another option would be to make an evolution of spots by looking for spot samplers from the 1840's till today. An interesting study of how tastes changed in 180 years.

July 16, 2023

I thought about the samplers for a long time: reproduction motifs? transtional

motifs? modern?  One morning I woke up and thought, noo, this is just too obvious a choice.  Couldn't I think of something more creative?  So I returned

to trolling for what happened in the 1840s.

Too many men was my first thought.

My second thought:what about the

Women of the Gold Rush?

I bet there would be fun stories about some of the women

involved. And I learned indeed there were.

Want to spend a bit of time there? Type in "Women of the Gold Rush"  and click around.

Instantly I  Knew....

July 17, 2023

I was trolling for happenings in the U.S. during 1840, the year on one of my

barely started samplers. I found a factoid from 1840 and instantly I knew

I had my subject..

Do you recognize these people?

He was a lawyer and an ardent abolitionist.

She married him on May 1, 1840 and they had 7 children (scroll down fo a photo of her with two of them).

In the end I devoted half of my sampler to her.

If you didn't recognize the people, you might recognize the woman from photos later in her life: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, partnered with Susan B. Anthony.

I chose the photo in the upper left; I thought it the most likely I could try and stitch. And so I did.