When I was a teenager in the early 60’s, I talked my mother into buying this sampler kit. I’m pretty sure it was offered in one of the tons of magazines we used to get. Because daddy worked in the advertising department at Phillips Petroleum, we received just about every magazine you could think of — all of them marked “sample copy.”
For some reason, it would take weeks for this stuff to make it through the mail system, so I was pretty excited when it finally arrived. The design was stamped on dark brown linen (I can’t remember if it had colored stamping or came with a chart) and included all the thread. Of course, I never finished it. I think I did one little motif and then the poor sampler sat around for months until my mother decided to finish it for me. I am famous for this technique of getting mother to finish my projects.
Later, mother and I (and all of my sisters) started doing counted cross stitch and we sort of looked down on these earlier stamped designs. I don’t understand why I thought that, because now I think they’re really cute.
Stamped Linen Sampler
Marjorie Dellasega, 1964
24″ x 24″
