This little sampler was a gift to my parents, Marjorie Louise Dellasega and Lawrence Anthony Dellasega, in honor of their 40th wedding anniversary. I’m so glad I made it, because daddy died just a few years later. The sampler was done on 22-count Hardanger fabric using one strand of floss. My mother and father are represented on the bottom next to the house in Bartlesville, Oklahoma where we lived in the 50’s & 60’s. Later they moved to Kansas where my father was from originally. I am jumping rope and my sisters, Sally and Jean Ann, are turning. My little sister, Mary, is next to our old baby buggy where you can just see my little brother, Larry. The cat is Miss Otis, who was very attached to my father. The bunny is not symbolic, but just fit in the space and confused everyone — “I don’t remember having a bunny.”
40th Anniversary Sampler
Martha Dellasega Gray, 1980
Cross Stitch on Hardanger
6″ x 7″
Oh Martha I love this sampler!
That’s just adorable. I love samplers. “I don’t remember having a bunny”.. cute, haha. The bunny does look great there, I have to admit. 😉
Beautiful and so clever! I admire the originality in so many of your projects!
Thank you Jan, Bunny and Ruthie for the nice compliments — Most of my cross stitch projects were copied precisely from books, so this was something new for me (although I did borrow some of the designs from books). I think some of my color selections were kind of odd — probably because I didn’t plan them ahead. I think I went back to quilting partly because the cross stitching seemed so rigid and not very creative.
Wonderful a anniversary gift for your folks! How proud they must have been! And what fun your family members had picking out all the important people and…oh, that bunny rabbit! Your work, again, is so beautiful! Thanks for sharing!