For anyone interested in samplers and their history I discovered the 1926 edition of Leigh Ashton’s Samplers Selected and Described as a digitised book free online.
The overview from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries covers primarily English samplers but European and American samplers are also included.
The book contains a number of coloured and black and white plates. The band sampler from the seventeenth century on the left is an example.
The 103 pages are presented in PDF files and are housed on the On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics. To access resources that are presented as PDF files you will need Acrobat Reader to open and read these files. You can download a free reader on the Acrobat site.
You will find this book half way down this page listed as
“Ashton, Leigh. Samplers Selected and Described with an Introduction by Leigh Ashton, The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, 1926, 103 pages….”
Tina, I make them 6 inches wide firstly because i was influenced by traditional band samplers which are narrow. Its also a width that allows a decent bit of the stitch pattern to emerge yet not so wide that it takes and age to work. It also fits on an 8 inch hoop easily which is best for my hands.
Sharon,
Why do you make your band samplers 6 inches wide-is there a method to the madness or do you just prefer that size?
Thanks, Tina