Juliet Anne Jones

Catharine Weidner, a German farm girl, attended a school near Oley, Pennsylvania and learned stitchery from Sarah Boone, a Quaker school mistress. Normally girls attended school for several weeks in the summer and this sampler is from the summer of 1838 when she was 15 years old. The motifs and borders are definitely from the Quaker style of sampler making as well as the alphabets. I can identify three motifs that were Pennsylvania German, however. Except for several glaring errors on Catharine’s part, there are 26 letters in each. She uses mostly cross stitch on linen with silk thread in a variety of soft colors but does use satin, eyelet, tent and rice stitches. In some instances, she offsets the cross stitch to fit the spaces in her lettering. However she makes glaring mistakes, probably due to the lack of planning ahead. She forgets a letter “J” in one alphabet but uses that same “J” in her parents’ names and relatives’ initials. On two alphabets, she runs out of room. She has one letter embroidered over the stitching in the right hand border. Her borders did not meet on all four corners. And there were others, especially in what needs to be mirror images.

Kathryn Lesieur wrote a history and biographical sketch of Catharine to accompany the chart. She does not mention that Catharine’s mother was Veronica and the name dutchified to Franica. Her maternal grandmother was also Veronica but transliterated as Fronica. Catharine’s paternal grandfather was Jacob Weidner, as verified by initials on the sampler; however the Lesieur history lists him as Lazarus, who was actually her great-grandfather. The rest of the information was accurate and the pictures interesting, especially the photograph of the back of the sampler. Catharine may have not planned well but her stitching was beautiful, both front and back.

The chart designer, Juliet Anne Jones, was true to the original and charted everything, mistakes included. The colors she decided were original to the sampler were very garish and not true to the photograph of the back of the piece. However, to be fair, I do believe the colors were more vibrant than the photograph. She also included excellent directions on the various stitches. Her method of working was from the center as with most modern needlework. Her graphs were clear and easy to read. However she provided six sections of graph and there was no overlap, making it difficult to execute without taping it together.

I stitched this piece in 2007 and, as a Weidner descendent where perfection is necessary and ripping mistakes is a skill taught early by my relatives, re-charted the design correcting all the mistakes. I also had help re-coloring it to softer, sampler colors and purchasing a more neutral linen color. My mother and grandmother would have been proud and I think Catharine would be also.… (más)