Homemaking Sampler

A few years ago I was given a book called 'The Gentle Arts 200 Years of Australian Women's Domestic & Decorative Arts' by Jennifer Isaacs. The book covers a wide range of arts and crafts including knitting, embroidery, painting and quilting. It's a beautiful history of arts and crafts in Australia.

In the book there was a picture of a cross stitch sampler called the 'Homemaking Sampler' with Sunbonnet Sue doing a chore every day of the week. I really loved the pattern and as I had been wanting to do a cross stitch sampler for a long time I thought this be be a nice one to make.

The pattern was available through McCalls in the early 1930's and being so long ago it is no longer available. After trying to find a similar pattern on the Internet I decided that I could create my own pattern based on the photo. I enlarged the picture in the book and then using an Excel spreadsheet I set about counting and mapping the pattern and colors. It took me a few weeks create a pattern and although it's probably not exactly right it's as close as I could get.

I tried to keep to the pattern and match the colors as close as possible to the photo in the book. It was a challenge to create a pattern from a picture but also very satisfying. I finally completed the cross stitch in 2006.