The Immigrant Sampler

Several years ago, 2005 actually I attended a Great Lakes Regional Seminar in Illinois.  It was actually co-sponsored by my chapter, Needle's Nest.  I took this great class by Lucy Lyons Willis called "The Immigrant Sampler".  I enjoyed stitching it with the dove's eye flag, hardanger band, and just the colors and the way it came together.  However, the neat part was that Lucy suggested that we do a little bit of family history research and add the initials and whatever other information we could find about ancestors who had immigrated to the US.  I didn't pick the first of my relatives to come over but rather picked a family on my father's side who arrived in 1864 on a ship named "The Stella".  Those are their initials, the year and the ship name all in the band with the ship.  I also wrote up the history that I found and put a copy on the back and another copy inside the backing paper. 

You can see by the date that I finished stitching this sampler in 2005, the same year as the class but I just finally framed it and hung it up in my living room.  It looks great there!  When I finished it in 2005 I also completed the hem stitching but the way it was designed it was to be mounted on the teal backing fabric and then mounted in a frame.  Let's just say that I'm a good procrastinator and put off stitching it to the teal fabric until a few weeks ago.  I'm somewhat sorry I did too since it looks great and was super easy!  And, as I was stitching it to the backing fabric I was able to straighten it quite a bit.  With all the open and hardanger work the sampler had somewhat wobbly borders but it's much better now!  I actually have another piece framed this same way and I did both of them in a day to get them out of the guest room where my parents were going to be staying at Thanksgiving and it was suprising at how fast and easy this was.  I guess I just needed guests in order to get it done!